09年12月1日是第22个“世界艾滋病防治日”，对于大理的男同性恋者来说更是个特别的日子，因为大理第一家同性恋酒吧今天正式开业。这家酒吧是由大理市卫生局出资12万元、由十几位防艾志愿者共同经营的。酒吧为“男同志”们免费发放安全套，并对他们进行性教育和“同伴教育”。中国新近感染艾滋病毒的病例中有三分之一是通过同性传播的，而长期受歧视和社会压力的同性恋者们只能在群体内部秘密活动，使得艾滋病毒的传播难以掌握和控制。大理是中国艾滋病毒感染人数最多的十个城市之一，这个“同志”酒吧的开业为更多来自农村的男同性恋者提供了一个接触防艾知识的场所。

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."

Founder Zhang Jianbo hopes that the bar will be a public gathering place for gay men, especially from rural villages, who used to gather in a patch of woods near the historic town.

The bar offers sex education and free condoms, in addition to companionship, Zhang said in an interview with the newspaper.

Though funded by the government, the bar is staffed by volunteers from a local non-government organization that works to prevent AIDS.

"Each year, the Dali city government spends 20,000 yuan ($2,929) on treatment drugs for AIDS. So if our bar succeeds in reducing transmission, our 120,000 yuan will be well-spend," Jiang Anmin, deputy director of health in Dali, told the paper.

China's gay community for decades lived in fear of discrimination and prejudice, with the earliest gay bars often the targets of police raids and closures while homosexuals often married women to avoid family and social pressures.

China now has about 100,000 known AIDS cases, but some health experts worry that HIV could spread easily among migrant workers and other hard-to-reach sectors. The government has switched to a strategy of outreach to the gay community, as part of efforts over the past few years to fight the spread of HIV.

"In the past the government relied on NGOs to reach out to the gay community," Bing Lan, director of outreach organization Aibai, told Reuters.

"Now there's a change, in that some local health bureaus feel they are able to reach out to the community themselves."

But one unintended consequence of outreach efforts in parks, bars and bathhouses frequented by gay men, Bing said, is that some gay men now avoid those haunts for fear of being found out.

"Today I saw a blog, saying that when the bar in Dali has its official opening on World AIDS Day, no-one will dare to go because there will be too many reporters there," he said.