Can a Confucian in modern China accept same-sex marriage?
Entrenched ideas of filial piety in China put huge pressure on gays, but things are changing slowly
What would Confucius say about same-sex marriage?
This question set China's social media abuzz after the US Supreme Court last month ruled that same-sex marriage was legal.
Affirming "the centrality of marriage" to human lives, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: "Confucius taught that marriage lies at the foundation of government."
To traditionalists, marriage and procreation form the core of Confucian family order. "Husband and wife" come third in his five cardinal relationships, below "ruler and subject" and "father and son" and above "brothers and friends".
Writing after the judgment, neo-Confucian scholar Fang Xudong cited Mencius: "There are three kinds of impiety, the worst of which is to have no descendants".
Others disputed this narrow understanding. A modern Confucian should accept a "committed and constructive" gay relationship, wrote Sinologist Sam Crane. Instead of reproduction, "what is important is that people perform humanity-creating social responsibilities".
Still, in a society steeped in filial piety, many gays and lesbians are compelled to live a double life.
This is an issue ...that ranks really low on the government's agenda
For those only sons under the one-child policy, the pressure to continue the family line means "closeted" gay men marry and raise children. According to a 2013 estimate reported by the , about 80 per cent of gay men in China were married or would marry. And at least 10 million women had gay husbands.
Li Yinhe, a sexologist whose 1992 book discussed China's first comprehensive survey on gay men, has been lobbying National People's Congress delegates to legalise same-sex marriage since 2000. "This is an issue affecting a minority group and ranks really low on the government's agenda," she says.
For China, same-sex marriage remains a long shot. Homosexuality was decriminalised in 1997 and taken off the official list of mental illnesses in 2001. No longer deemed pornographic, it remains off-limits in films, television shows or literature.
According to the US-based Pew Research Centre, in 2013 only 21 per cent of the population accepted homosexuality. Many clinics and mental hospitals reportedly offer treatments, including hypnosis and electric shocks, to "convert" homosexuals.
Yet, things are slowly changing. In July last year a Beijing court heard the nation's first case against "gay therapy". That a court agreed to act was itself symbolic amid authorities' "don't ask, don't tell" attitude towards homosexuality.
In December it found such treatments unlawful and ordered the defendant clinic to pay the claimant 3,500 yuan (HK$4,429) in compensation and issue an apology on its website.
Some parents of gays and lesbians have apparently embraced the idea of same-sex marriage. In February 2013 about 100 of them wrote to NPC delegates demanding "marriage equality in China".
Li Tingting, one of five women rights activists arbitrarily detained in April, exchanged wedding vows with her lesbian partner on July 2 under the watchful eye of the authorities.
In a rapidly modernising China, perhaps a more pertinent question for society is how to resolve disagreements over a matter as deep and integral as marriage.
