Life

A Lesbian Couple Unofficially Married In China

by Eliza Castile

With the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States (yay!), it's easy to get caught up in celebrating and forget that the LGBT community still has a long way to go. Luckily, we have Teresa Xu and Li TingTing, the lesbian activist couple who unofficially "married" to make a stand for gay marriage in China, to remind us that the fight is still far from over. Homosexuality is still largely taboo in China, where it was considered a criminal offense until 1997 and a mental illness until 2001. Unlike the United States, however, the LGBT community doesn't have to fight primarily against religious opposition. Instead, the stigma largely stems from the pressure to get married and carry on the family line, as well as the expectation to conform, CNN reports. "You have only one child so you want your child to be as 'normal' as everybody else," the Executive Director of the Beijing Gender Health Education Institute, Xiaogang Wei, told CNN in 2014.Unsurprisingly, same-sex marriage is not legal in China, but lesbian couple Teresa Xu and Li TingTing hope to change that. Li made the news earlier this year when she was recently detained on International Women's Day for planning a demonstration against sexual harassment, but her run-in with the law hasn't deterred her from activism. According to Mashable, the couple held an unofficial ceremony in Beijing on Thursday.

Although their marriage will not be recognized by the Chinese government, the ceremony was intended as a political statement in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. Since you're reading about it now, I'd say it was a success — and the fact that they both look happy and beautiful certainly doesn't hurt. Congratulations to the couple! Here's hoping that the path to same-sex marriage ends as well in China as it did in the United States. To check out photos from the couple's wedding, head over to Mashable .

Images: Fotolia, Giphy