Chinese Court: No Problem with Technical College Textbook Stating "Homosexuality = Mental Disorder"

LGBTQ+ Group Criticizes 'A Retrograde Ruling'

On the 25th of last month (local time), when the Equality Act, a bill to expand LGBTQ rights being reintroduced in the U.S. Congress after two years, passed the House of Representatives, Democratic members of the House posed for a commemorative photo holding LGBTQ and transgender pride flags in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] A Chinese court has ruled that describing homosexuality as a mental disorder in a university textbook is not problematic.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong on the 2nd, last week the Intermediate People's Court of Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, China, ruled against a 24-year-old woman named Sisi in the appeal trial of a lawsuit she filed against the university textbook publisher for such content.

Sisi, who enrolled at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, discovered in 2016 that a psychology textbook described homosexuality as a mental disorder. She and her friends held a protest in front of the publisher. The following year, she filed a lawsuit against the publisher and distributor demanding the deletion of the expression and an apology.

Sisi argued that describing homosexuality as a mental disorder lacked scientific basis and perpetuated misunderstandings about homosexuality. However, the court did not accept Sisi's claim, stating that the content was not a "factual error" but an "academic viewpoint." She appealed in November last year, but the court did not overturn the first trial's ruling.

SCMP pointed out, "In China, homosexuality was removed from the list of punishable offenses in 1997 and from the list of mental disorders in 2001, but in 2021 the court ruled that describing homosexuality as a mental disorder was not problematic."

The Chinese LGBTQ+ community also criticized the ruling as regressive. The Chinese LGBTQ+ organization 'PFLAG,' headquartered in Guangzhou, pointed out that describing homosexuality as a mental disorder is like believing "the sun revolves around the earth."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.