A good example that social progress is not the inevitable outcome of economic progress.

It seems like things are getting worse for LGBT people world-wide. Why is this happening? Are we perceived as a threat, somehow?

Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but I don't think there's universal agreement on what constitutes "social progress".

Good point. Even economic development is hard to define, and that can be measured in dollars!

Don't overthink it, this is China. There is no protection of free speech, quite the contrary, a lot worse is done on a daily basis by that government than yet another form of social media censorship.

Yes, people who don’t follow the primary social narrative (which, funnily enough, revolves around being white, cis, heterosexual, male-and-dominant or female-and-submissive, and so on and so forth) have always been seen as a threat. For a small amount of time, a group consisting primarily of gay men with minimal demands (i.e. stop directly physically harming us and, later, change a couple of forms) were in a political position in the West such that they couldn’t be ignored.

Given that the article is about China and that the OP wrote about global trends you can probably remove 'white' from your list of descriptors...

I don't know what the person you're responding to meant, but you might want to have a chat with your Chinese friends about different skin colors. Not only do many cultures have a thing about lighter skin shades, even the 1920s US backlash against immigration was mostly about 'swarthy' southern Europeans, who weren't as lily-white as northern Europeans.

Interestingly, in the non-predominantly-white countries I’ve lived in, lighter skin tones are desired heavily, and are often a class indicator. People will use creams with ingredients like mercury to attempt to lighten their skin colour.

Where are things getting worse besides China?

and the guy that decided this got essentially a lifetime job offer. Not good.

China's veer towards a more conservative, centralised political atmosphere as it has become the world's 2nd largest economy over the past decade has certainly wiped out much of the recent progress in gay rights within its borders.

However, speaking of things getting worse for LGBT people world-wide, one trend dominates all others. Nothing else even comes close to the effect the growth of Islam. Both its intensification in previously moderate countries, such as Egypt, and its spread into left-leaning, mainstream politics in western Europe have been nothing short of catastrophic for LGBT communities.

Unfortunately, both economic and political pressures can make it hard to criticize bad ideas, including on this site. The idea that homosexuality should result in social media restrictions, or in being thrown off a roof is a bad idea and should not be defended for either economic or political reasons.

I wonder how many points you lose from your social credit score for being gay?