Why Do The Communists Fear Gay rights?

Social conservatism plus paranoia about foreign infiltration prompts a crackdown

 

These are grim and lonely times for China’s gay communities, as the country’s LGBT support groups are forced to close, one by one. This campaign of repression reveals a lot about President Xi Jinping’s China, a paranoid place in which security agencies and ideological commissars enjoy ever-greater clout.

For the same message is delivered, time and again, whenever policemen question gay rights advocates (and sometimes their family members). It is heard when university chiefs punish students for handing out rainbow flags, or when officials press landlords to evict non-profit groups. The message is that sexual minorities pose a political risk. True, some officials and state-backed scholars also call same-sex love an affront to mainstream Chinese morality, and a threat to young people whose patriotic duty is to marry and have more babies for the Motherland. But activists report that, during interrogations, national security is emphasized much more than morality. Despite the political chill, gay people (as well as bars and dating apps) enjoy far more tolerance than they did a generation ago—but only if they keep it quiet. In today’s China, forming a community is a graver offense than being gay.

The Economists