State media hail China's largest "gay pride" event

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.