PFLAG Beijing

So here in "communist China," you have to wonder what the status of gay life is.  Well, the fact that the biggest gay club in Beijing, Destination, can be celebrating it's 10th year and have a huge banner like this on its wall facing the street should tell you the situation is comfortable.....as long as you don't make waves and demand rights that the country, excuse me...party,  isn't ready to yet provide.

This past Saturday right here on the Destination dance floor (which would be packed with dancing gay men in 8 hours) was Beijing's PFLAG meeting.

I came here to support my friend Frank, who if you are a longtime reader know has come out to his family and is one of those men who is doing the hard as one of the first generation to be openly gay.  Frank actually got his mother to come to a meeting!

She's there with her head in her hands, clearly uncomfortable and not wanting to be there.  She actually asked to leave about half way through, but stayed until the end.

The room was packed, with about 150-200 people in the room during my two hours there.

So, I have to admit, my Chinese is ok, but not to the point where I can understand the older generation speakers who speak with an accent and fast and with lots of colloquialisms. The man who's back is to the camera is a gay man, came out in 2007, and has a lesbian daughter. I was ENTHRALLED by the man in the blue shirt who was SO serious the entire time. I wanted to know why he was hanging on every word of every speaker.

And of course, at all Beijing gay events is the high profile filmmaker Fan Popo.  Google him, I think he's 100 to watch in the gay world under 40.

So, I have to say that I have never been before to a PFLAG meeting.  This meeting is for gay friends and parents....I don't know why I was expecting to hear from so many younger people, but all the speakers in my two hours there were older than me. When I talked to Frank's Mom, the ONLY thing she talked about was Frank having a child. What it made me realize that with all our gay marriage progress in the United States, gays have always been able to adopt or at this point use surrogacy (a law that just was never passed?) and so that issue for parents of gays has been off the table. When I came out, I could always say to my Mom that she could have grandkids, it only was a question if I wanted to have them. I was always able to neutralize that argument because I had the law (or no law) on my side. I wonder if Frank's mom would react differently to Frank being gay if he had that option in China.

From this PFLAG meeting of all these brave openly out men and women. I then went to the birthday part of Onions' friend. In a restaurant a kilometer away we were 11 gay men in a room, toasting, drinking and making fun of each other (I did my best to play along as many of them speak so fast and in a dialect that I don't understand), but none of them out to family. All of them are in the big city, living their gay lives, most of them in relationships or trying to meet cute guys on the mobile apps, but not doing the hard work of being out in their public lives.  Only I, the American am out to family and at work. People ask me what it's like being gay in China. Privately, as always, being gay is easy and safe in small circles. But in public, it's still fraught with challenges. It's these men I was having dinner with who need to be at the forefront of making being gay more visible in Chinese society. Frank is doing his part.