{"id":152816,"date":"2013-03-13T11:11:27","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T18:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=152816"},"modified":"2013-03-13T11:12:53","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T18:12:53","slug":"push-for-marriage-equality-at-npc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2013\/03\/push-for-marriage-equality-at-npc\/","title":{"rendered":"Push for Marriage Equality at NPC"},"content":{"rendered":"
Global Times’ Liu Sha reports on efforts to push for marriage equality at China’s annual National People’s Congress<\/strong><\/a>, which CASS sociologist Li Yinhe describes as the only available avenue for gay rights activists.<\/p>\n She has been working on legalizing same-sex marriage and has sent letters to NPC deputies every year since 2003, but was either informed that those proposals could not be sent to the legislature because deputies could not get the required 30 signatures from other delegates, or she simply received no response.<\/p>\n “Even if the proposal gets sent to the NPC, it might be buried under a pile of proposals from other deputies,” Li Yinhe said.<\/p>\n [\u2026 S]kepticism remains, even among gay couples. “If gay marriage was one day allowed in China, I wouldn’t dare get married with my lover here, because I could not predict how people would look at me and I wouldn’t be sure whether my future career would be affected by this disclosure,” college student Zhou L\u00fc, who is planning to get married in the UK, told the Global Times, adding that regardless of policies or influences from the West, he is skeptical China’s traditional culture will ever really accept gay people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n