This Valentine’s Day, a group of gay and lesbian Chinese activists and their American allies are hoping to bring a little more love to a country that has an estimated 60 million LGBT people, most of them still in the closet.
A series of ads appeared on social media sites in China on Friday. They show gay, lesbian and straight couples relaxing at home. In one, a man adjusts his boyfriend’s tie. In another, two women hold hands at a kitchen table. The text beside the photos reads: “Love is not a choice. We did not choose to be homosexual. We just are. Happily, the world is big enough for all of us.” (The text accompanying the photos of straight couples reads, “We did not choose to be heterosexual.”)
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Li said he considers himself pretty lucky. He lives with his boyfriend in Beijing, where he says it is much easier to be gay than in a small town. He is out to his family, and they have slowly come to accept his identity. Still, he says, the absence of legal protection is scary.
“The biggest challenge that LGBT [people] have right now in China, I think, is the lack of safety that we feel all the time,” he said. “We fear that our identity might be exposed and trouble will come along with that: education, job, hospital, [renting] an apartment. All kinds of trouble.”
