By Emily Rauhala | GlobalPost

HONG KONG — If the 2008 Olympic Games was Beijing’s coming-out party, last week it was finally Shanghai’s turn. The city of 20 million held the country’s first ever gay pride festival.

Shanghai Pride featured seven days of film screenings, plays and panel discussions capped, on June 13, by a blowout bash. There were drag shows, drumming and (symbolic) same-sex weddings. But there was no parade. Public gatherings are verboten, and organizers decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

The event was a victory for Shanghai activists and, they hope, a step toward gay rights in China. But it is not, as one observer put it, the great leap forward. The parade problem points to Beijing’s ambivalence toward the very notion of pride. “In today’s China you can be gay,” explained Bin Xu, a veteran LGBT

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/15/shanghai-pride-china-gay_n_215785.html