Being a homosexual was a criminal act in China until 1997 and Homosexuality was listed as a mental illness in China until 2001, facts we should not forget when talking about the long march for gay rights happening in this country.   Another hiccup in the generally positive development of gay rights in China is the use of gay conversion therapy here.  Gay conversion therapy is when people (stupidly) try to convert a gay person into a straight person.  This useless act is often tried through the use of religious guilt, peer pressure and sometimes more bizarre actions: “Picture this: you are watching gay porn, you are feeling good.  But they put ammonia into your nose to make you feel bad.”  I didn’t know that gay conversion was going on in China (other than the feeble attempts of Chinese mothers to help their gay sons find a wife), but I guess it is happening in both the Christian community and with professional psychiatrists.

The Global Times (they seem to be talking a lot about gay issues these days) just published an article about a public forum at Beijing’s Renmin University by Yi Huso, a “research fellow at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University in New York and a visiting assistant professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing,” which discussed the use of gay conversion therapy in China.

The article is rather odd.  It clearly states how gay conversion is bad for gay men, “those who failed at therapy might have been harmed in terms of chronic depression, low self-esteem, have difficulty sustaining relationships and experience sexual dysfunction.”  At the same time the article ends by quoting a Chinese “expert” who believes that, “If he/she is willing to change, I believe the therapy would not cause any harm.”  The whole thing is not very well written and besides making it clear that there are well over 10 million gay men in China the article doesn’t mention how the straight Chinese population needs to change to allow for a more *cough* harmonious future.  So, in the end the only real value I got from the article came from the intriguing story of one gay man who had gone through gay conversion therapy in China:

Will, 20, a self-described sexually confused boy who embraces several religions, nodded from time to time.

As a Christian, he experienced the “spiritual interventions” designed to rid the individual of his or her sexual orientation through prayer, group support and pressure.

“But I failed because I could not stand when they kept telling me how sinful I am and stopped me from meeting my gay friends,” he said.

At last, traumatic anti-gay encounters changed his mind.

“I can have no sex. I can have no religion. But I cannot be non-gay just because others say I am wrong to be gay,” he said.

In the end it’s all just more mixed signals from the Chinese government and the Communist Party, which in fact runs the Global Times.  Just yesterday there was an article published by Xinhua, the official press agency of the Chinese government, with the headline: “Public tolerance needed for Chinese gays to tackle AIDS.”  On the same day Beijing News published a report on how the China Telecom is blocking websites set up to provide information to homosexuals:

The report quoted Guangdong branch company of China Telecom, one of the country’s main internet service providers, as saying that the “green filtering software” which was somehow put in place without prior application and confirmation of its clients has blocked a majority of government-sponsored websites that provide authoritative information on HIV/AIDS prevention and common knowledge about homosexuality.

What a mess….