Chinese parents learning to accept their gay children

By informing themselves about homosexuality, open-minded parents are challenging traditional objections to their children being gay. Photo: Li Hao/GT

In a daze, Wu Houjun (pseudonym),switched off his computer and stumbled into his bedroom, unable to come to terms with what he had just discovered.

His son, it seemed, was gay.

Wu crawled into bed. Then, unable to hold it in any longer, he wept. While perusing the family iPad two days earlier, some group chat boxes that his 15-year-old son had left open had caught his eye. The people his son was chatting with were not his classmates or friends that Wu knew about. They were not talking about computer games, or comic books, or even girls.

They were talking about boys.

"It was the darkest and most tortuous moment in my life," Wu recalls.

In that moment, Wu knew. In the past year, his son had been sullen and irritable, and could often be heard repeating a pessimistic refrain: "What's the sense in living?" Wu connected the dots.

Wu, 51, had grown up in an era when homosexuality was a crime in China that was denounced as an act of moral perversion.

In the following days, he desperately devoured all the information he could find on the Internet about homosexuality. He consulted a psychologist, who told him homosexuality was "natural," and not an "illness that needed to be cured."

Wu's son had not actually come out of the closet to him. But Wu started imagining how much his son must have suffered, living in the knowledge that he was "different" to most of his peers. He decided to take on his son's burden as his own.

"I understood he must have been struggling," said Wu. "I wanted to protect and support him."

This was a little over a year ago.

A father's devotion

Eager to learn more about gay people and how other parents dealt with the discovery that their children were gay, Wu joined an online support group on instant messaging service QQ run by Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) China. He started meeting with other parents who had gone through similar experiences.

Founded in 2008, PFLAG is a non-profit organization that runs workshops and gives support to family and friends of gay people, with the aim of eliminating discrimination against gays and lesbians in China. With about 20 branches across China, PFLAG regularly organizes group discussions to help parents to better understand and communicate with their gay children.

"We've had a few parents come to us because they've become certain that their teenage children are gay, even if their children haven't come out to them," said Hu Zhijun, executive director of PFLAG China.

Wu took the initiative to approach PFLAG because he wanted to find a way to support his son to simply be himself, regardless of his sexual orientation.

"I was like an anxious underground party member who had lost contact with his comrades. [Finding PFLAG] was like being reconnected to the organization," said Wu.

In past decades, being gay in China often meant being disavowed by one's family members, due to a lack of understanding and social prejudices against gay people.

"But thanks to the Internet, which has opened people's eyes to different cultures and ways of living, the younger generation of parents have started to become more open-minded," said Hu. "After experiencing a period of mental anguish and emotional struggle, [many parents] now accept and support their gay children."

"It was not my son's fault, nor was ours," said Wu. "The solution for me is to face reality and find ways to help him live a happy life."

Wu has tried to make friends with gay teenagers in an effort to better understand his son. He visited Destination, a well-known gay club in Beijing's Chaoyang district.

"I wanted to learn more about how gay people live. When I discovered that all the boys I met were good people - sensitive, thoughtful, and warm - my concerns were dispelled."

In August this year, Wu's son finally came out of the closet to him. Wu, his wife, and their son discussed the issue openly and calmly.

"When my son went through his period of adolescent rebellion, we started talking less and less," said Wu. "But after that long conversation, the walls we had built up against each other crumbled down."