Story highlights China's LGBT community has made huge gains in social acceptance

Unlike Western counterparts, they face little religious opposition

The biggest source of pressure comes from family, and the one-child policy

There is no legal protection in the work place for the LGBT community

In this month's On China join Kristie Lu Stout for a revealing conversation with China's leading gay rights advocates.

Beijing (CNN) In this narrow Beijing hutong, the rainbow flag flies free.

I'm in Two Cities Cafe, a popular meeting place for the local gay community. Here, I meet with some of the country's leading LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) advocates to learn about gay identity in China.

In the last two decades, China's LGBT community has made huge gains in social acceptance.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1997, and a few years later it was removed from an official list of mental illnesses.

But unlike their counterparts in the West, China's LGBT community does not have to face down strident political opposition or right-wing religious uproar.

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