Homosexuality can be considered a psychological disorder in Chinese law.
Referring to controversial academic literature, a court in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu ruled that a textbook defining kingship as disorder is not a factual error, but a divergent ‘academic view’, the South China Morning Post reported. report. The ruling of the Suqian Intermediate People’s Court confirms the ruling of a lower court.
China’s LGBTQ community has criticized the decision. Old Jiayong (24), who filed the lawsuit in 2017 as a college student to get the publisher of the textbook to take his “poor quality work” out of circulation, called the ruling “random and unfounded”.
Ah Qiang, a spokesman for PFLAG, a support group for the foreign Chinese community and their families, accused the editors of the textbook and the courts of not being in touch with contemporary culture.
“The editor of the textbook appears to be using views that do not reflect society’s perceptions of today’s sexual minorities,” Ah said in a statement.
Homosexuality was officially decriminalized in China in 1997 and discontinued in 2001 as a mental illness – with the exception of homosexuals who are particularly troubled by their sexuality, according to the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders.
Now, a social worker, Ou, who prefers the moniker Xixi, discovers the dubious text in a 2013 issue of “Mental Health Education for College Students” (Jinan University Press) during her first year at South China Agricultural University in 2016. The book describes homosexuality under “common psychosexual disorders” and declared same-sex relationships are “believed to be a disruption of love and sex or distortion of the sexual partner.”
Xixi sued the book’s publisher and retailer JD.com, demanding that the company remove the reference and publicly apologize for the homophobic content distributed by universities in China.
According to the first court ruling, the lawyer also did not lack scientific support, which the case called a disagreement.
In November, Xixi filed the appeal that ruled only against her. She does not agree that her evidence is lacking, and plans to continue her fight.
“Maybe this ruling is to reduce controversy,” she said. “But it has also allowed textbooks that pathologize homosexuality to continue circulating, which is unfortunate.”