Beijing - Chinese state media on Wednesday said the
country's largest gay pride event was of 'profound significance' for
tolerance and social progress.
The eight-day Shanghai Pride 2009, which began Sunday, was a 'good
showcase of the country's social progress alongside the three decades
of economic boom,' the official China Daily said.
'Compared to the 1980s and early 1990s - when most gays and
lesbians had to meet covertly in toilets, public bathhouses, parks
and bus stations - the situation has changed dramatically,' the
English-language newspaper said.
'In the last decade, gay and lesbian organizations, websites,
blogs and bars, teahouses and clubs have mushroomed, catering to an
estimated 30 to 40 million homosexuals on the Chinese mainland,' it
said.
It said Shanghai had proved itself 'one of the most open and
progressive Chinese cities' with its 'increasingly active gay and
lesbian community' and the festival.
'Shanghai Pride 2009 should be a source of great encouragement to
the tens of millions of 'comrades,' as homosexual men and women are
called in the Chinese mainland,' the newspaper said.
But the report noted that the festival did not include a parade
and was small and 'relatively low-key' compared with similar events
in other countries.
It also said that gay men and lesbians in rural areas still face
strong social prejudice and sometimes police harassment.
Research has found that while educated and affluent gay men and
lesbians in urban areas can now meet in cosy bars or through online
chatrooms, many others continue to lead double lives.
A survey of 400 gay men in 2006 found that many of them maintained
both a heterosexual marriage and homosexual relationships.
Discussion of all aspects of sexuality has become more open in
China since the late 1990s.
After allowing abuses and even imprisonment of gay men for
decades, the government finally decriminalized homosexuality in 1997
and removed it from its list of psychiatric illnesses in 2001, 11
years after the World Health Organization.
The government appears to have allowed more openness in part
because of fears over the spread of HIV/AIDS among gay men.
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