China city government opens gay bar to fight AIDS

A Chinese city with one of the nation's highest rates of AIDS has opened a government-funded gay bar in an outreach effort that has stirred debate over the use of taxpayers' money. The health department in Dali, a picturesque city on a lake in southwestern Yunnan province, funded the bar to reach out to China's increasingly open gay community. Dali is one of the 10 cities in China most affected by AIDS. Same-sex transmission accounts for about one-third of new HIV infections in China, the minister of health said this month. "Some readers think that it's a waste of taxpayer money, or an indirect endorsement of homosexual behavior," the Beijing News said in an opinion piece on Monday, citing letters to the editor after it ran an article on the bar over the weekend. "They think if there were another way to reach out to the gay community, it wouldn't be necessary to open a bar."