Lesbian sues government over textbooks

A Chinese lesbian yesterday took the government to court over textbooks describing homosexuality as a "psychological disorder."

Qiu Bai, 21, a student at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou City, brought the action against the ministry of education, demanding that it give her details of how it approved materials and how they could be changed.

China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, and removed it from the list of mental illnesses four years later.

Qiu's team showed reporters a manual, "Student Psychological Health," published in 2015 by the prestigious Renmin University and distributed to students nationwide.

"The most commonly encountered forms of sexual deviance are homosexuality and the sick addictions of transvestism, transsexuality, fetishism, sadism, voyeurism and exhibitionism," it read.

Other psychology textbooks have similar content.

Qiu, who uses a pseudonym, said that she hoped to make sure such materials "no longer harm students," adding that she had come under pressure from her university over the case, but it had been mitigated by coverage in Chinese media.

Holding a large rainbow flag, she said she was "excited" by her "first opportunity to have a face-to-face dialogue with the ministry of education."

Supporters brandished signs outside the Fengtai district court in Beijing reading: "We want a fair judgment" and "Homosexuals must gain visibility."

Attitudes are changing in major Chinese cities, but homosexuals are still widely subject to social and family pressures in the country.

Often without siblings, due to the country's one-child policy, they must contend with parental insistence on offspring, and so frequently resign themselves to heterosexual marriages while keeping their true sexual orientation secret.