Homosexuality Can Be Deemed 'Mental Disorder' In China, Says New Court Ruling

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After the Chinese Communist government previously decriminalized homosexuality in 1997 and removed it from the country's official list of things deemed mental disorders in 2001, a major court decision in China this week has "shocked" various rights monitors by once again classifying homosexuality as among "common psychosexual disorders."

According to South China Morning Post, this latest ruling began with a legal dispute over a higher education textbook, namely the 2013 edition of Mental Health Education for College Students, published by Jinan University Press. A lawsuit filed by a student challenged the book given that it—

...listed homosexuality under "common psychosexual disorders" – along with cross-dressing and fetishism. It stated that homosexuality "was believed to be a disruption of love and sex or perversion of the sex partner".

On Tuesday the Suqian Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern province of Jiangsu upheld a ruling by a lower court that agreed with the textbook's classification, allowing the book to remain in multiple university programs. The court dubbed it a legitimate "academic view" as part of the ruling.

It ends a years' long legal saga the result of which is sure to come under fire from the World Health Organization – not to mention also some of the same progressives in the West who are often heard to defend China and the CCP on a range of issues.

The New York Post reviewed the legal battle leading to this latest deeply controversial ruling as follows:

China’s LGBTQ community has criticized the decision. Ou Jiayong, 24, who filed the lawsuit as a college student in 2017 to get the textbook’s publisher to pull its "poor-quality work" from circulation, called the ruling "random and baseless."

Ah Qiang, a spokesperson for PFLAG, a support group for the queer Chinese community and their families, accused the textbook’s editors and the courts of being out of touch with contemporary culture.