Beijing is the Worst City in the World to Be Gay

Beijing is at risk of losing its standing as a world-class, cosmopolitan city with the news that it came dead last in a survey of international cities as ranked by their openness and tolerance towards its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities.

China's poor treatment of its LGBT communities was reflected in the poor showings of its top Chinese cities on the "100 best LGBT cities in the world." Beijing (#100) was joined at the bottom of the list by fellow first-tiered mainland city Shanghai (#89) as well as former British colony Hong Kong (#83).

The survey was conducted by German-based housing rental website Nestpick which narrowed its list from an initial grouping of thousands of cities from over 80 countries. The final criteria for the survey required a minimum of 2,500 respondents from the LGBT community of each selected city, indicating that this survey included at least 250,000 people.

Beijing fared the worst overall in terms of safety, scoring only 1.84 out of five from its own lesbian and gay community. Beijing also did poorly on the survey's other criteria that included its gay dating scene (2.15), nightlife (2.12) and the openness of its society towards gays (2.03).

With "gay conversion" therapy still regularly practiced in the country whereas same-sex marriage has not yet been legally recognized, the Chinese cities also ranked poorly on LGBT rights.

Beijing scored just 9.14 out of 25, a far cry from the 23.56 scored by Madrid, the top-ranked city for LGBT openness.

To get a sense of how poorly Beijing was rated by its gay community, the Chinese capital ranked even lower than Belgrade (#99). Homosexuality remained classified as an illness in Serbia until 2008 when a public opinion poll saw 70 percent of respondents call homosexuality "a sickness."

As bad as that is, things are still better in Belgrade for gays and lesbians than in Beijing. Unlike China, Serbia recently had the honor of appointing its first-ever openly gay prime minister, Ana Brnabić, a person who also happens to be the country's first female prime minister.

China's decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, but public attitudes haven't improved much since then. Depictions of homosexuality are banned from films and television last year, resulting in Chinese censors banning internet drama Addicted as well as a gay kiss in the recently released Hollywood film Alien: Covenant.

By comparison, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriages in May.

According to a 2013 Pew Research Survey, only 21 percent of China's population are in favor of homosexuality.

Concurrently, a study made by Peking University last year revealed that 58 percent of gay and straight Chinese respondents felt that people of the country's LGBT community were ostracized by their families. The same study showed just 15 percent of gay people had revealed their sexual orientation to their families.

Twenty percent of people who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transsexual face a "high risk of depression," says a report by the Beijing LGBT Center and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Psychology.

Images: Sixth Tone

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