In China, Gays Resort to Marriage... With Benefits

Gay and lesbian couples in China are under enormous pressure to marry and procreate. Social expectations, rooted in Confucian philosophy, dictate that dutiful children carry their families on through having children of their own, while the government's rule restricting families to only one child means that there are no siblings to pick up the torch.

For the nation's gays and lesbians, it's not an insurmountable problem--but it does make life more complicated. One solution--workable, if less than ideal--is for gay and lesbian couples to seek one another out and intermarry, with the understanding being that the true commitment in the relationships still bonds the men to one another; ditto for the women, reported The Miami Herald on June 27.

Social and governmental animus toward gays is waning, the article noted; homosexuality was decriminalized less than 15 years ago, and it hasn't even been a decade since homosexuality was officially taken off the list of mental disorders in China. (In the U.S., homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness in 1974.) The government even opened an officially sanctioned gay bar late last year (though in urban centers, gay night spots are commonplace).

But family matters remain delicate around the issue, with parents feeling that they need to conceal their gay children's sexuality from the wider network of relations. Fear of disappointing their parents drives many Chinese gays and lesbians into lies and sham marriages.

Others, however, refuse to be forced into marriages with people with whom they do not wish to live or be intimate. Though China does not legally recognize marriage parity for gay and lesbian couples, a few same-sex families have celebrated symbolic weddings, with the state-run media even giving prominent exposure to a gay couple that celebrated just such a wedding publicly--though the men, 45-year-old Zeng Anquan and 27-year-old Pan Wenjie, then had to deal with negative family fallout, reported the AFP in a Jan. 12 article.

"My sister warned me she would never call me her brother unless I break up with Pan, and I have answered hundreds of phone calls from friends and relatives who say they feel ashamed of me," Zeng told the media. "But we are deeply in love and will never desert each other."

Others are less certain; China Daily.com reported on April 16, 2009, on how one gay man who had celebrated an elaborate wedding with his male partner succumbed to a burst of panic and tore up the informal certificates he'd been given to mark the occasion, just in case the marriage might ever be recognized by the government. "I know the wedding was not legally valid, but I liked the freshness of the idea," Wang told the media. However, the two copies of the marriage certificate freaked him out: "Fearing the possibility that it could be a binding document like an IOU note, I thought it was better not to keep it," Wang said of the certificate.

But relationship fears are not the sole province of the gay set. Another gay man spoke to the newspaper of having "saved" his male partner, who formerly had been married to a woman: "He suffered a lot from marriage to a woman," "Xian" (not his real name) told the publication. "I saved him from darkness."

For others, the prospect of marriage--whether or not it is ever legally recognized--holds out a hope for stability and societal legitimacy for same-sex couples. Said a wedding planner identified only as "Xingxing," who celebrated his own nuptials with his life partner, "The wedding tells the public that we are a formal couple. It would have been better if there had a legal procedure to legitimize it. I've tried, failed and suffered like many other gays around me in short-lived affairs." Added Xingxing, "Maybe recognized same-sex marriages will provide a turning point for steady relationships between gay lovers."