Yahoo – AFP,
31 July 2014
File photo
taken in October 2012 shows a couple lighting a lantern for the
Mid-Autumn
Festival before their same-sex wedding ceremony in China's Fujian
province (AFP
Photo)
|
Beijing
(AFP) - A Beijing court began hearing a landmark case on "gay
conversion" treatment Thursday, as an activist in a nurse's uniform knelt
over a patient, wielding a giant needle, outside.
"Homosexuality
doesn't need to be cured!" chanted about a dozen supporters. "Haidian
Court, oppose conversion therapy!"
Homosexuality
was de-classified as a mental disorder in China in 2001 but widespread
intolerance toward gays and lesbians remains, and activists hailed the
unprecedented case as a significant step forward.
The
plaintiff, who is gay and has given his name only as Xiao Zhen, says the Xinyu
Piaoxiang clinic in Chongqing traumatised him when he was electro-shocked after
being told to have sexual thoughts involving men.
He is also
taking action against China's top Internet search engine, Baidu, for running
advertisements by the facility.
Those who
come out to friends and family in China often face significant pressure to
undergo sexuality "treatment" or marry a partner of the opposite sex.
"It's
the first case about anti-conversion therapy in China," said Xiao Tie, 28,
executive director of the Beijing LGBT Centre, which is backing the legal
action.
"In
China, most people who undergo 'conversion therapy' do so because they are
pressured by their family. Parents, once they realise their child is gay, urge
him or her to go to a psychiatric hospital or undergo treatment," she
said.
Most people
who claim that they have been successfully "converted" by the therapy
only say so in order to stop the distressing treatments, she added.
Conversion
therapy has more than a century of history around the world, but has fallen out
of favour with medical authorities.
Nonetheless
the lucrative industry persists in countries from Singapore to Britain and the
United States -- where reports of electro-shock use have added to momentum for
a ban.
Zhang Rui,
21, who is in charge of the Beijing LGBT Centre's psychological counselling
programme, said advocates hope the case will help change Chinese public
perceptions of gays as suffering from mental illness.
"We're
here to tell even more people that conversion therapy is not scientific,"
she said. "Homosexuality can't be 'cured."
(Photo: Alexandria) |
"The Akashic Circle" – Jul 17, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Religion, The Humanization of God, Benevolent Design, DNA, Akashic Circle, (Old) Souls, Gaia, Indigenous People, Talents, Reincarnation, Genders, Gender Switches, In “between” Gender Change, Gender Confusion, Shift of Human Consciousness, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)
“… Gender Switching
Old souls, let me tell you something. If you are old enough, and many of you are, you have been everything. Do you hear me? All of you. You have been both genders. All of you have been what I will call between genders, and that means that all of you have had gender switches. Do you know what happens when it's time for you to switch a gender? We have discussed it before. You'll have dozens of lifetimes as the same gender. You're used to it. It's comfortable. You cannot conceive of being anything else, yet now it's time to change. It takes approximately three lifetimes for you to get used to it, and in those three lifetimes, you will have what I call "gender confusion."
It isn't confusion at all. It's absolutely normal, yet society often will see it as abnormal. I'm sitting here telling you you've all been through it. All of you. That's what old souls do. It's part of the system. …”
No comments:
Post a Comment