Posted 10:32 PM by Blah blah

Today I directed two more episodes of our political TV show. We tape it at KSAR, a tiny cable channel in Saratoga. I am still such a klutz when it comes to remembering what to do at the control panel.

Gays in China Step Out, With One Foot in Closet (New York Times):

"Mr. Wu, an entrepreneur in his 30's who considers himself an activist of sorts, talks comfortably above the disco beat about being gay.

But when the doors close at 2 or 3 a.m., he will cross the border to the other world also inhabited by the vast majority of China's gay men, that of husband and father, as he returns to the apartment he shares with his wife and school-age child.

'In China there is a very strong tradition that to be a man you must get married and have a child, so I did,' explained Mr. Wu, who refused to give his full name. 'We also respect and obey our parents' wishes, so I did it for them, too.'

As gay clubs, newsletters and Web sites multiply in mainland China, gay men in a few places like Shenzhen are enjoying choices and a kind of freedom that was unthinkable only a few years ago. China effectively decriminalized homosexuality only in 1997. It came off the list of mental illnesses just last year.

But now that it is practically possible to live as a gay man in China, the vast majority still exist in a strange sort of limbo. The norm in the gay community is to get married, play it straight at work and shuttle regularly between two lives."

I met a guy this year who told me the most amazing thing. (He's not Asian.) His dad, a prominent religious leader in his community, "came out" publicly at last. After 30 years of marriage, his dad admitted, to the shock of his wife, three children, and his congregation, that he is and always has been homosexual. "Can you imagine what it must be like to be married and have children with someone when you are not even attracted to women?...To live a lie for most of your life? It just blew my mind," he told me. Amazingly, his mom accepted this news and his parents are still together. No Jerry Springer appearances for them.