By Karen Ocamb
June 8, 2015 :: 7:47 PM
The language of love is universal, though too often the universal right to express that love is not. As Americans await the decision by the Supreme Court to finally join 18 other countries in granting the freedom to marry to same-sex couples—we have also seen how the repeated images of loving couples around the world are slowly wearing down prejudice and hate.
On Tuesday, June 9, the result of that loving persistence pays off in West Hollywood as 7 gay couples from China will be officially married in a public ceremony starting around 9:00am at the WeHo Library officiated by WeHo Mayor Lindsey Horvath. The L.A. LGBT Center is holding a reception for the couples at The Village from 6:00-8:00pm. Both events are open to the public.
“West Hollywood has long been at the center of the marriage equality movement,” Horvath said last week when the mass wedding was announced. “We hope that this wedding will send a strong message, especially to LGBT people across the globe, that the City of West Hollywood celebrates your right to marry and welcomes your destination wedding as a symbol of our commitment to equality for all.”
Though homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997, same sex unions are still not officially recognized. But the need to marry still trumps legality, tradition and even the expected negative outcome from families—a dramatic example of which happened on Jan. 13, 2010 when China Daily featured a front-page photo of Zeng Anquan, 45, and Pan Wenjie, 27, getting married at a gay bar in Chengdu.
“We are no longer hiding any more. The wedding is our happiest and most precious moment,” Zeng, a divorced architect, told the paper. “But we are deeply in love and will never desert each other.”
Five years later and Wang Zi Long and Zhu Xiao Long (pictured above) are among 10 gay and lesbian couples selected as winners in an online contest hosted by Alibaba, a giant Chinese e-commerce company based Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Alibaba and its marriage equality campaign partners Beijing LGBT Center, PFLAG China, China Luxury Advisors and Blued, China’s largest gay social dating app— owned by Danlan.org, China’s largest, and most popular gay website— sponsored and promoted the trip to WeHo and Los Angeles through Alibaba Group subsidiary Taobao (China’s biggest online retail platform, akin to eBay). Taobao featured the contest during Valentine’s Day.
“By holding this campaign, we want to demonstrate our respect toward the aspirations and dreams of same-sex couples,” a spokeswoman for Taobao told The WorldPost. “This campaign also showcases the uniqueness and individuality of the Taobao platform.” Not to mention outreach to LGBT shoppers in China who apparently represent an untapped $300 billion-a-year market.
The ‘We Do’ campaign asked same sex couples to submit short videos sharing their love story and why they wanted to marry. More than 400 couples submitted videos, which were then narrowed down to 20 couples by Taobao’s partners. Then online visitors to the site voted for the winners, with more than 75,000 votes cast to select the final 10 couples. Because of visa problems, only 7 couples actually arrived.
Liu Xin and Hu Zhidong, who’ve been together for more than 7 years, also look forward to making their relationship official.
“Even if this ceremony isn’t recognized here in China, it’s still something we really hope for in our hearts. It’s a moment that we all want to experience for ourselves,” Liu, 31, told The WorldPost.
“There’s not much I can do on my own to push forward legalizing gay marriage in all of China,” Liu continued. ”But when I attend this kind of ceremony, at the very least it’s going to be something that I really want for myself, something that will be worth remembering.”
Darrel Cummings, Chief of Staff at the L.A. LGBT Center (pictured with some participants in the Center’s Emerging Leaders program ) recognized the importance of developing a relationship with LGBT Chinese years ago:
The Los Angeles LGBT Center began its work with Chinese activists about 7 1/2 years ago in partnership with the Chinese LGBT organization, AIBAI. I recently returned from a visit there and the progress that has been made in this relatively short period of time is both inspiring and a testament to the tenacity and vision of our colleagues there. Alibaba would not have even recognized the LGBT community as a market or one worth supporting if it were not for the brave efforts of the leaders and their organizations with whom we work. The LGBT couples who are here to be married and those who will someday marry in China are and will be standing on the shoulders and sacrifices of these incredible leaders.