Chinese police force crackdown on gay Web sites

An Internet domain-name registration company in China has purged several influential gay Web sites under pressure from police in a crackdown on "illegal content." At least three gay forums have been closed down in the ongoing "clean-up" process, including a burgeoning sex-education organization that has attracted 400,000 visits since its establishment in February. Some other forums have begun filtering gay content themselves in order to pass censorship restrictions, with one deleting all its gay-related sections and changing its forum's name from "Fujian Tongzhi," a popular Chinese term for "homosexual," to "Fujian Comprehensive Forum." One of the administrators of the closed forums said he was appalled by the company's censorship criteria: "It is a great humiliation to classify all gay forums as pornography, adult-only, and sex forums." He argued that one of the most popular sections of his forum was dedicated to sex education, which provided information on condom usage and HIV knowledge surveys for gay people. (Sirius OutQ News)