China's AIDS Awareness Campaigns Slowly Inform Public (Photo : Getty Images)
The staging of China’s first Mr. Gay pageant was one of the rare times in the country that an event involving homosexuals was allowed to be staged in public.
Most of the time, events involving members of China’s LGBTI community are censored like what happened on Monday after a Beijing court handled a lawsuit filed by Qiu Bai, a 22-year-old gay student from Guangzhou City, against the Ministry of Education. The case sought a change in the way college textbooks discuss homosexuality which it still calls a disease.
A government official insisted the textbooks’ language dud not infringe on her rights as a gay student but refused to respond directly to Qiu’s complaint that the textbooks were spreading false information. U.S. medical associations have delisted homosexuality as a psychiatric ailment in 1973, while China decriminalized homosexuality in 2001.
After the hearing, the judge said a decision would be made later and adjourned the hearing. Some members of Chinese media interviewed Qiu the same day. However, they told the student the government ordered them not to cover the case, reported Vox.
It appears the hearing was just for show with nothing concrete happening on Qiu’s complaint.
In early September, a gay Chinese couple, Sun Wenlin and Hu Mingliang, filed a lawsuit after the local civil affairs bureau rejected their application for a marriage license. They filed a lawsuit, but a court rejected the case.
