All the effort and loss has been worthwhile

I'm gay, and when my son was born 10 months ago, I decided to live in the closet for my entire life.

He will never know that he has a gay dad and his mom is a lesbian, or that he was conceived via a self-insemination procedure performed by his mom.

My wife and I have chosen to stay in the closet forever to protect our son from potential pressure and discrimination.

Life now is tiring, and caring for my son is hard work. My boyfriend of five years left me because I had less time to spend with him, but all the effort and loss has been worthwhile.

It took me three years to find a lesbian who like me wanted a child. There are always more gay men who want a child than there are lesbians.

We met in online chatting groups of hundreds of local gays and lesbians who need a marriage in name only, because same-sex marriage is illegal in this country.

Before I met my wife, I occasionally came across lesbians who looked exactly like men, and I knew that they would never be acceptable to my parents.

We got married in November 2014, with the sole aim of having a baby. Because neither of us can bear intimacy with the opposite sex we tried a crash course we learned on the internet, injecting my sperm via a syringe.

In fact, before we tried self-insemination we consulted doctors at the fertility center about in vitro fertilization, but we were turned down because both of us were in good reproductive health.

Luckily enough, the self-insemination process went smoothly and my wife became pregnant in May last year. The baby lives with his mom and I go to see him every day after work. I bear the entire cost of raising him.

Both of us - this husband and wife in a "cooperative marriage" - love our son wholeheartedly and that will never change.

It's hard to land a stable relationship in China's gay men's scene, and my son will always be on my mind. I don't expect him to take care of me when I am old; I will feel satisfied calling him from time to time and knowing he's happy.

Wang Xiaofeng spoke with Shan Juan.

Wang Xiaofeng (not his real name), 35, from Chuzhou city, Anhui province, is a gay man who married a lesbian so they could have a child.

(China Daily 12/01/2016 page6)