Same-sex weddings are illegal in
China, a fact known to Lu Zhong, 24, and Liu Wangqiang, 20, when
they tweeted an invitation to theirs, via the Sina Weibo
microblog, on Sept. 22.
The big day would be Oct. 2, the two young men announced,
and anyone was welcome to attend. For the precise location, a
prospective guest needed only contact the instant chat address
included in the tweet. And for those still unclear about the
parties to be married, the couple attached several affectionate
engagement photos. In the days that followed, they received
RSVPs and a few hundred dollars worth of donations to defray the
costs associated with what they hoped would be a traditional
ceremony.
In some sense, there’s not that much new here. China’s
first public (and illegal) gay marriage, so named by the media,
took place in 2010 in the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu and
was given sympathetic coverage by Communist Party-owned news
outlets at the time. Proposals to legalize gay marriage have
been introduced (and ignored) at the People’s Political
Consultative Conference, China’s mostly ceremonial rubber-stamp
legislature, for almost a decade. Though there are no statistics
on just how many gay marriages (public or private) have taken
place, growing activism for the legalization of the unions
attracts significant media and netizen attention.
One reason for the increased awareness is that China is
opening up to the fact that it is home, by one expert’s
calculation, to some 10 million marriages between gay men and
straight women. A less common, but equally well-known analog is
for a gay man and a lesbian to marry legally while remaining
loyal to their same-sex partners. These sham marriages are
closet-re-enforcing ruses pursued under social pressure to
produce offspring, among other familial duties. They also have
something that illegal gay marriages don’t: legal protections
that range from the right of inheritance to the benefits of
divorce law in the case of a marital breakdown.
Still, the ubiquity of sham legal marriages doesn’t
guarantee the acceptance of legal marriages between same-sex
partners any time soon. After all, in China homosexuality was
illegal as recently as 1997 and listed as a psychosis as
recently as 2001. Liu and Lu, as a public example of a committed
gay couple, have positioned themselves within an ongoing public
debate that places China’s traditional biases against
homosexuality at odds with new demographic realities and a
young, microblogging generation that prioritizes personal
freedom.
The reaction to Lu and Liu’s invitation proved as much.
Their tweet quickly garnered 500 re-tweets (or “forwards,” in
Sina Weibo parlance) and nearly 200 comments, the vast majority
of which were congratulatory and -- based on a brief scan --
seemingly offered by a predominantly youthful set of followers.
That’s small-time traffic by the standards of China’s
microblogs, but it was big enough to be noticed by the
authorities in Ningde, the modest-sized city in Fujian province
where the tweet announced that the wedding was supposed to be
held.
According to a recently published interview with Lu, the
local authorities were less than thrilled with the idea of a gay
wedding in their jurisdiction, and in the days running up to the
big day, they canvassed local hotels and karaokes (likely
wedding venues) in hopes of finding and halting the ceremony.
Why? It’s unclear. The local government hasn’t released a
statement, and in interviews and tweets the couple has been
reluctant to describe or explain the government’s behavior.
Still, Ningde is a smaller city in a largely rural province, and
social norms there -- especially among the older generation and
those in leadership -- are surely more conservative than in
China’s bigger and more modern cities. Equally likely, the
conservative, promotion-minded authorities weren’t keen to find
themselves leading a city that microblogs would soon dub the
home of “Fujian’s First Gay Marriage.”
Even government pressure could not deter Lu and Liu. In a
daring bit of romantic bravado, they dropped whatever venue
they’d originally planned for the wedding and instead led a
motor scooter motorcade into the center of Ningde and held a
very public ceremony. Video taken of the event suggests that it
was attended by several hundred (at least) seemingly spontaneous
well-wishers who, it can safely be assumed, would’ve reacted
poorly to any law enforcement action against the young couple.
The video was uploaded and began to circulate via microblogs,
without impediment from online censors.
However, likely because the wedding took place in the midst
of an eight-day national holiday that was enjoyed by
journalists, too, it didn’t really generate much in the way of
posts, stories or discussion until the middle of last week. By
the time media outlets did pick up the story, their tone was
sympathetic and congratulatory -- especially toward China for
having such an open-minded attitude on gay marriage. Xinhua, the
Communist Party-owned national news wire, headlined its Oct. 20
story, “Gay Wedding Reflects Growing Tolerance in China” and
failed to mention the harassment and discrimination that Lu and
Liu faced in Ningde. Rather, the article extolled the wedding as
a sign of social progress against traditional biases toward gays
and lesbians.
For all the sympathetic news coverage, China’s leading
newspapers and news sites have yet to write editorials
formalizing their sympathy toward to Lu and Liu, much less their
support of gay marriage. This is no accident: Editorials printed
in Communist Party-owned papers are tantamount to official
position papers, and for now, at least, officials don’t appear
ready to issue statements in favor of liberalizing marriage laws
to permit a type of union that was a criminal offense not so
long ago.
Still, there are prominent individual voices willing to
write in favor of gay marriage and well-established venues
willing -- and allowed -- to publish these opinions. Last
Thursday, for example, Wu Chunmei, a prolific writer, published
“The Ethical and Legal Challenges of the Fujian Marriage,” on a
popular state-owned opinion site with wide editorial latitude.
The essay has been widely syndicated and circulated in recent
days, and the arguments it makes echo those that have been put
forth in favor of gay marriage, in a less formal manner, on
Chinese microblogs for the last several years:
“Our Law of Marriage expressly stipulates that marriage is
between a man and a woman, and that means that same-sex marriage
hasn’t been recognized by law yet. So, strictly speaking, the
marriage of these two men is without legal validity or
protection. Thus this extravagant wedding is just a cathartic
scream by these gay men, as well as an overt provocation
designed to challenge the marriage law and traditional morality.
They’re expressing their aspirations, their longing for respect
and confirmation, their quest for acceptance and blessings.”
Wu concludes her piece with a broad statement in favor of
personal freedom against the incursions of the state. For many
members of China’s older generations, it’s an alien theme
(though by no means unacceptable). But for young Chinese raised
in an era of ever-widening sexual freedom (both granted and
grasped), the language she chooses is nothing less than self-
evident:
“The creation of law is based on the principle that it does
not encroach on the interests of the majority. At a time when
the number of gays increases day by day, and people’s attitudes
toward gay marriage become more and more open, why can’t
homosexuals be accepted -- especially when they do no harm to
other people and society?”
Ironically, Lu, when interviewed on Friday by a journalist
with the Netease internet portal about his reasons for wanting a
public wedding ceremony, avoided talk of social acceptance and
change, and explained, simply: “I’m quite traditional, quite
conservative, and I simply wanted the feeling of having a
wedding.”
That’s hardly the angry cry of a social revolutionary, and
perhaps such composed restraint bodes well for the future of gay
unions in China. Whether or not it does, however, doesn’t appear
to be Lu’s immediate concern: These days, he and Liu are on
their honeymoon, crossing China by train.
From:http://www.bloomberg.com/
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