THOSE who rely onChina’s official news outlets may not realise that it has been a busy few days for gay rights in Greater China. The state-run media made little of the ruling fromTaiwan’s highest court on May 24th that ordered parliament to enact a law giving gay couples the right to marry within two years. They also largely disregarded a narrower ruling two days later, from Hong Kong’s top court, that the government could not deny the partner of a gay official benefits that are enjoyed by the spouses of other civil servants (the pair had married in New Zealand, so far the only country east of Suez to allow gay couples to do so).
Ordinary Chinese, however, were not so muted. Weibo,China’s Twitter, lit up with millions of reactions, most of them positive. “Love disregards male or female, young or old, strong or weak,” wrote Zhang Xinyuan in a typical comment. || Sun Wenlin, who sued in court in 2016 to have his marriage to his male partner registered by the local government in Hunan, a southern province (he lost), called on people to sign his online petition to legalise same-sex marriage (so far modest 6,000 have signed up).
Taiwanand Hong Kong have frequent street protests, independent judges, openly gay celebrities and democratconstitutions.Chinahas none of those things (and is trying to crush Hong Kong’s democratic impulses, too). || Nonetheless, the rulings could make a difference in China because attitudes towards homosexuality are fluid and rules are changing. Gay characters and issues have started to appear more frequently on television and in films. A gay dating app called Blued has 27m users. A similar app for lesbians called Rela (with 5m users) was shut down this week. School textbooks continue to define homosexuality as a “disorder”, but last year a court in Beijing agreed to hear a case demanding that the Ministry of Education revise such teaching.
