News, Reviews & Commentary on Gay and Bisexual Men in Entertainment and the Media

China Bans Gay Film Festivals

Since AfterElton deals with gay and bisexual men in entertainment and the media, this seems the place to discuss China's lack thereof of such material. China bans gay film festivals and other large gatherings of gay people. Hong Kong is in the Special Administrative Region (SAR) so it is the exception to the rule since it is governed differently. But Hong Kong only has 8 million residents, while the rest of China has 1,300,000,000 residents (1.3 billion). There are 130 million gay people in China living with no right to gather as they see fit or to see representations of themselves through free and independent media. In terms of sheer numbers of people, that is like having 43% of the USA population (which is 130 million out of 300 million total) deprived of their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression. So when you see the Olympics out of Beijing, remember China and the Olympic committee are not upholding human rights by holding it in that choice of location.

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Psionycx's picture

China never makes sense

Consider that despite their aggressive efforts to constrain their population growth they are nonetheless hostile to homosexuality, which can be rather handy when you're massively overpopulated and looking to manage your numbers.

But they're caught in a culture clash between traditional values as recent as a few decades old that called for maximum possible family sizes and a modern day situation where they have just too many freakin' people.

On the balance side, gays aren't the only ones whose human rights get trampled in China. I personally plan to ignore the Olympics as much as possible.


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