Ma Yuyu (left) and Elsie kiss in a small alley outside the marriage registration office where they asked to be married, before being denied, in Beijing on February 25, 2013. Photo: CFP

Working at a marriage registration office in Beijing, Xiao, a 26-year-old marriage registration officer, often feels touched by the love and hope expressed by the smiling couples she encounters. But from time to time, she sees two men or two women holding hands as they walk to the counter, and she frowns.

On February 25, two women approached. Xiao got ready to say "please go and check China's Marriage Law, same-sex marriage is not legal," as she had so many times in the past.

But the couple, Ma Yuyu and Elsie, were calm yet firm. "We knew that and we were just trying to get people's attention," Ma told the Global Times, holding their own hand-made marriage certificate in front her chest.

A growing number of gay people are coming out of the closet and many of them are seeking a public, stable and legal relationship, as would be the case with any heterosexual couple.

As volunteers from the Beijing LGBT Center, Ma and Elsie said that the National People's Congress represents a once-in-a-year opportunity to express themselves while social issues are being considered and passed to China's top legislature.

But the couple was disappointed by the fact that despite widespread media coverage on the issue, no government official or deputy to the NPC has ever made a statement in regard to same-sex marriage.

Desire for stability

In the 1980s, homosexuality was considered illegal in China. At the beginning of the 21st century it was classified as a mental disorder by medical experts. Gay people, especially men, were terrified of being found out, so their affairs were secret, reckless and short.

"When I dated my first boyfriend in my 30s I never thought we could get married, so we just had fun together, without thinking about maintaining a spiritually and sexually stable relationship," Li Liang, 42, a photographer who migrated to the US 10 years ago, told the Global Times. He later married another man in Massachusetts.

He said that the gay community was a hidden underground circle, and people often changed partners. In many cases, they were married to heterosexual spouses.

Things have changed, especially in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where young people are now not so afraid of coming out of closet.

"More of us want to be recognized by law and without a policy to assure that, we encounter many problems like property ownership and inheritance," said Xu Bin, a lesbian working at the Beijing-based gay-rights group Common Language.

Silent government

In stark contrast to a more vocal public, the government remains mute on the issue.

"Just having a few couples register at the marriage registration office is not enough for the government to have an idea of our needs," said Li Yinhe, a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, adding that the NPC sessions represent the only outlet for gay-rights activists to express themselves.

She has been working on legalizing same-sex marriage and has sent letters to NPC deputies every year since 2003, but was either informed that those proposals could not be sent to the legislature because deputies could not get the required 30 signatures from other delegates, or she simply received no response.

"Even if the proposal gets sent to the NPC, it might be buried under a pile of proposals from other deputies," Li Yinhe said.

After a number of gay couples came into the marriage registration office, Xiao reported their requests to the director of her office, but always received the same answer - it is not a big issue and we do not have to bother other officials.

She recalled one instance when colleagues were talking at her office and one of them said, "how will the government benefit from passing such a law? There are so many other urgent things to do in China."

The AIDS issue

The transmission of HIV through male-to-male sex, which represents 32 percent of the total infections according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in 2009, has contributed to the stigma faced by homosexual couples. Figures from the MOH in 2008 showed that 4.8 percent of gay men were HIV carriers.

Li Yinhe, along with Zhang Beichuan, represent two of the country's most prominent sexologists working on gay rights. They both pointed out that if gay people were able to have more stable relationships and fixed partners, the government could worry less about HIV transmission.

"This is logically sound, but the government will never say that in public," said Jiang Hui, a field researcher specializing in AIDS from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

She told the Global Times that in the countryside, there is a large hidden gay population which has been held back by conservatism, and if the government showed a positive attitude toward gay relationships or implemented policies to this effect, the results could be unpredictable.

"No one could be assured the HIV infection rate would be lowered, as some of them would still change sexual partners. Many gay people don't really need marriages, instead, they need public recognition," said Jiang, adding that the gay male population would still be more vulnerable to HIV as there is no fear of pregnancy and because men are more likely to transmit the virus to others compared to women.

Traditional barriers

Conservative elements of the public are still the biggest barrier faced by same-sex couples, and the government is afraid of the public reaction, said Zhang, adding that officials know they're incapable of resolving the situation to everyone's satisfaction.

However, older members of the public are not always as conservative as the government might think. In recent days, the parents of over 100 homosexual people in Guangzhou signed an open letter to NPC deputies, hoping to legalize gay marriage.

One of the parents, surnamed Qi, told the Global Times that they hope government acknowledgement will reduce discrimination within society against their children.

But for all their efforts, skepticism remains, even among gay couples. "If gay marriage was one day allowed in China, I wouldn't dare get married with my lover here, because I could not predict how people would look at me and I wouldn't be sure whether my future career would be affected by this disclosure," college student Zhou Lü, who is planning to get married in the UK, told the Global Times, adding that regardless of policies or influences from the West, he is skeptical China's traditional culture will ever really accept gay people.