Society Should Understand Us: China’s First Gay Couple
January 27, 2010 by Gay Agenda News Team · Leave a Comment
All they want is more understanding from society, say China’s first gay couple who got `married’ Jan 3.
Zeng Anquan and Pan Wenjie ‘fell in love at first sight’ when they met at a bar in Sichuan province’s capital Chengdu city, Beijing News reported Tuesday.
Zeng, 46, has a daughter from a 26-year marriage while Pan, 27, confessed to his parents that he is more into men.
‘I don’t feel well when I am with a woman, but I could not speak about it in the past. When Pan planned a surprise wedding for me, I was shocked at first but on second thought said ‘Why not’,’ Zeng was quoted as saying.
But Zeng said publicity about their marriage was creating new pressures for the couple, China Daily said.
‘Every day, a dozen of people watch us where we live. It’s inconvenient and awkward for us,’ he said.
‘We go on TV shows and interviews, and all we want is more understanding from society. I want more gay people to say, ‘This is how we live and it’s not wrong’.’
China’s Gay Rights Revolution
January 19, 2010 by Gay Agenda News Team · Leave a Comment
It’s easy to see why the Chinese gay rights movement has been left wondering just where it stands. Homosexuality was only removed from the state-approved list of mental illnesses in 2001, and since the government has broadly taken a laissez-faire approach to the issue. While Beijing is home to a handful of gay clubs, it would be extremely unusual to see a gay couple openly affectionate in any other public place. It appeared the government was happy for a gay community to exist, as long as it broadly stayed out of the public eye.
Yet last year, something seemed to change. In April, the state-run China Daily, the country’s largest English-language newspaper, splashed a picture of a gay couple marrying close to Tiananmen Square on its front page. Although the marriage was primarily ceremonial and not legally binding, it was state-approved. The paper ran a similar front page story last week, days before the cancellation of the gay pageant.
Police Halt Mr. Gay China Pageant!
January 15, 2010 by Jason Shaw · Leave a Comment
Jason Shaw reports on this breaking news out of China. It appears that the Chinese Police have canceled what would was due to have been the first gay pageant ever in the country.
The event was canceled, just an hour before it was due to take place, today in Beijing. The Mr. Gay China pageant was to feature a fashion show, with the host in drag and was set to take place in a rather new upscale nightclub in Beijing, but police arrived and said it could not take place, because correct procedures had not been followed.
Ben Zhang, the organizer stated:
“They said the content, meaning homosexuality, there nothing wrong with that, but you did not do things according to procedures.”
Zhang reported the police told him he needed to apply for approval for events that included performances, in this case a stage show. The enforced closure of the event comes after a successful rehearsal had been held Thursday night in the same location, and the local ‘official media’ had reported on the pageant.
However, Zhang said that he hoped it would mark another step toward greater awareness of homosexuals in a country where gays are frequently discriminated against and ostracized.
Eight men were competing in the very first gay pageant of it’s kind in the country, for the chance to be in the Worldwide Mr. Gay pageant, which is all set to take place next month in Oslo, Norway.
In China, gay rights are slowly starting to be attained. It was only as recent as 2001 that homosexuality was finally removed from the official list of mental disorders and sodomy was decriminalized in 1997. And whilst there have been improvements in gay rights, many gay men are still scared or fearful of coming out or drawing attentions to their homosexuality. Attitudes may slowly be changing, in the country, especially in the bigger cities, but there is still a long way to go on the road toward full equality. However there is definite signs the society of moving from intolerance to indifference.
Jason Shaw – gayagenda.com’s United Kingdom correspondent – Brighton, England.
Jason’s own blog is The Seafront Diaries
China’s First Gay Marriage
January 15, 2010 by James Hipps · Leave a Comment
Zeng met Pan, 27, a demobilised soldier last November at a bar. One month after their first date, Pan broke up with his girlfriend and moved to Zeng’s apartment. However, they faced pressure and prejudice. “Sometimes, I even had to tell others that Pan was my adopted son. We finally moved back to my hometown of Luodai, a remote town in eastern Chengdu, where nobody knew us.”
The couple finally made their choice – to get married in a bar frequented by male homosexuals, which was unprecedented in the city. More than 200 of the couple’s friends who shared their orientation were invited to the wedding but many guests who saw their wedding photos were surprised to find the bride in the white wedding gown was a man.
Same-sex marriages are not recognised in the country, and it is claimed that the Zeng-Pan wedding ceremony is the first such public event in the country. The country has roughly 30 million homosexuals – 20 million gay men and the remaining, lesbians, according to estimates by Zhang Beichuan, a professor at Qingdao University and an expert on homosexuality and HIV/AIDS prevention. The professor found in a survey of 1,259 homosexuals that 8.7 per cent were fired or forced to resign after revealing their sexual orientation, and 4.7 per cent felt their salary and career advancement were affected. Some 62 per cent keep their sexual orientation a secret in the workplace.
China City Government Opens Gay Bar
November 30, 2009 by Gay Agenda News Team · 1 Comment
A Chinese city with one of the nation’s highest rates of AIDS has opened a government-funded gay bar in an outreach effort that has stirred debate over the use of taxpayers’ money.
The health department in Dali, a picturesque city on a lake in southwestern Yunnan province, funded the bar to reach out to China’s increasingly open gay community. Dali is one of the 10 cities in China most affected by AIDS.
Same-sex transmission accounts for about one-third of new HIV infections in China, the minister of health said this month.
“Some readers think that it’s a waste of taxpayer money, or an indirect endorsement of homosexual behaviour,” the Beijing News said in an opinion piece on Monday, citing letters to the editor after it ran an article on the bar over the weekend.
“They think if there were another way to reach out to the gay community, it wouldn’t be necessary to open a bar.”
Founder Zhang Jianbo hopes that the bar will be a public gathering place for gay men, especially from rural villages, who used to gather in a patch of woods near the historic town.
The bar offers sex education and free condoms, in addition to companionship, Zhang said in an interview with the newspaper.
