Posted on the Huffington Post
By Dane Steele Green
If there is one dead horse I just love to beat, it is “do your research.”
The world being what it is, gay travel is usually a path of least resistance, that is, going to places where the odds are in our favor we will have the time of our lives while at the same time still keeping our lives. This is big business for London, Buenos Aires, and Taipei, but let’s face it: not many of us LGBTQs are booking flights to Moscow or Nairobi — and with good reason.
But it would be overly simplistic to divide the world up into a black and white realm of who is and isn’t friendly to the gay travel dollar. There is a well-defined band gray in the matter, and it is growing. However slowly, a handful of nations are getting their heads around the fact gays and lesbians aren’t evil personified, particularly when it comes to tourism dollars. Call it cynical, but money talks. If that is the hurdle we have to jump over, well, we wouldn’t be the first ones to do so.
When traipsing into the great gay unknowns of the world, it is extremely unwise to wing it on your own. There are all sorts of heretofore unknown cultural pitfalls to tiptoe around even if the whole same-sex thing is removed from the equation. Around the globe, small operators are on the vanguard to introduce the outside gay world to their countries, and introducing their countries to the outside gay world. We show up, act normal because we ARE normal, and voila! The preconceptions fall away, bit by bit. As any gay-rights activist will tell you, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
A good example of a nation coming around is Bulgaria. To be sure, the country, for most of its modern history a grim outpost of the Soviet Union, could hardly be called an undiscovered gay paradise. The road to acceptance here is, shall we say, bumpy. But since the country joined the European Union, with its very progressive rules concerning sexual minorities, cracks in the post-communist façade of Bulgaria are beginning to show.
A sign of better things to come is Gay Holidays In Bulgaria, and if the name isn’t tip-off enough, it is a tour company focused solely on introducing the Big Gay World to this ancient corner of the Balkans. With its first-class Black Sea beaches, ruins going right back to Europe’s foundations, and cities that are the perfect backdrops for selfies, Bulgaria certainly has its draws. From the perspective of novelty, Bulgaria is in an almost unique position by being a virtual blank slate. How many places have the opportunity to brand themselves from the ground up in the age of Instagram and Twitter?
While certainly not blank slates, India has found that as it gets more and more of the world economic spotlight, the inevitable forces of social change are sure to follow. While its art would put the kinkiest of gay porn to shame, the land of maharajas and mahouts never lost the iron-clad conservatism imported from conquering Victorian England, and that goes for its draconian laws concerning same-sex…anything. The country even backslid when a seminal 2009 court case decriminalizing consensual homosexual sex was overturned in 2013. At the same time, Bollywood has run headlong into the subject with hits like “Dostana,” and heartthrob actors including Imran Khan openly declare support for pro-LGBTQ issues. Transgender rights scored a big win last year when “hijras,” those born intersex, gained the right to be declared a third gender. There are dozens of same-sex “dating websites.”
And with them are dozens of tour operators for LGBT travelers. Gaytripindia, Purpledrag.com/India, Injapink, Zoomvactions, and Pinkvibgyor are just a few hopping onto the bandwagon. Gay is coming to India, whether it likes it or not, and more, gay has been a part of India since the beginning.
China is something all together different. It is not a gay Nirvana, but it is not fire and brimstone, either. Still very much a communist state, with all its Leninist and Maoist strictures, China has nevertheless seen such rapid progress across its culture and being that it is a different animal than, say, Soviet Bulgaria. Unlike much of the rest of the world, the native religions, Taoism and Buddhism, don’t exactly have clear prohibitions against same-sex relationships and there is even a “gay god,” Tu’er Shen. Things looked up when homosexuality was decriminalized in 1997.
But in the wonders of politics, just because you decriminalize something does not mean you legalize it. Gays actually have no legal status whatsoever, yea or nay, in the Middle Kingdom from a national standpoint; the LGBT lay of the land is a patchwork of local court cases and ordinances, but there is not overriding equality law beaming out from Beijing, and the very ingrained Confucian idea of marrying and continuing the family line picks up where religion left off.
If idea can to anything, however, it is change. Several of the tours that operated in India also do so in China, Zoomvacations and Purpledrag among them. Adding to those are operators working both within and without the country: Purpleroofs (gay Asia has a thing for purple, it seems) and HEtravel are just two. HEtravel also operates in Morocco, and when it comes to the Muslim world, even in fairly progressive countries like Morocco, being gay can get you jailed or beaten or worse…
And it with such grim realities that proves the worth of these operators. They know the turf, how to act, where to go, and where not to. For Western gays and lesbians, it is galling to have to radically alter our behavior just to go on vacation, but not everywhere is the West, or even westernized. American LGBTQs are rightly celebrating their newly-found right to marry nationwide, but it was a long time coming. Some places have yet to catch up, are only just starting, or have yet to conceive the thought.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And do your research.