Gay 'conversion therapy' government funded in Hong Kong

By Paul Canning

The Hong Kong government is paying for discredited Reparative or Sexual Orientation Conversion Therapy (SOCT) for LGBT citizens.

Since June, the Hong Kong Government Social Welfare Department has been using the Christian SOCT organisation New Creation, to train the department's social workers in ”converting” their young clients' sexual orientation.

The concept has long been promoted by US evangelical groups. Now it is reaching around the world with 'conversion' a major component of anti-gay efforts by evangelicals in Africa and hundreds of 'Christian' clinics in Ecuador inflicting physical and psychological torture on lesbians to try to “cure” them.

In the Bavarian city of Munich the Union of Catholic Physicians in Germany recently announced it had found a cure for homosexuality.

Germany's LSVD gay and lesbian association executive director, Klaus Jetz, says conversion therapists are a growing problem in Germany.

"They are copying what has been going on in the US for a long time, and now they're coming to Germany," he told Deutsche Welle.

Mainstream medical associations universally pan the idea that you can 'pray away the gay' and the movement has lost ground in the US due to media exposure and general mockery of some of its more patently absurd elements.

Michelle Goldberg at the Daily Beast, just wrote about the 'End of the Ex-gay Movement'.

This followed the news that a 21 year veteran of the primary American 'ex-gay' group Exodus International, with 11 years on the board of directors, John Smid just wrote that:

I also want to reiterate here that the transformation for the vast majority of homosexuals will not include a change of sexual orientation. Actually I’ve never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual.

In Hong Kong a coalition, Tongzhi Community Joint Meeting, was formed to launch a global petition campaign against the Hong Kong government paying for 'pray away the gay' training. More than 20,000 signatures have been collected. In addition, a solidarity protest led by LGBT Asian American groups took place in New York back in August.

They say that the government is violating the Guidelines on Code of Practice for Registered Social Workers, the World Health Organization's position on sexual orientation, the Hong Kong Bill of Rights, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Guidelines on Sex Educations in Schools issued by the Curriculum Development Council of HKSAR, the Code of Professional Conduct by Medical Council and the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders.

The Social Welfare Department refused to publicize the details of what they were planning, but LGBT activists managed to collect a list of related documents which they published on a webpage “WiGayLeaks” [zh]. The documents show that the efforts are based on the “sick model” assumption with an attempt to convince the attendees that “same sex attraction is curable” and draw co-relation between homosexuality with AIDS and other sexual transmitted diseases.

In Ecuador, activists have managed to get numerous 'pray away the gay' clinics shut down. Hopefully the people in Hong Kong will have similar success.

Related articles

• Ecuadorian clinics torture LGBT to "cure" them (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Small gain as Hong Kong extends relationship visas to LGBT families (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Hong Kong's Pink Season, Sep 30 - Dec 4 (fridae.asia)

Small gain as Hong Kong extends relationship visas to LGBT families

Image by Mr Wabu via Flickr

Source: Asia Times

By Kent Ewing

While gay activists in this conservative city of 7.1 million people have for years struggled, mostly in vain, to win equal rights and legal protections for homosexuals, immigration officials have been quietly handing out special "relationship visas" for partners of gay professionals coming from overseas.

The stark contradiction has, of course, met with protests of a double standard among the local gay community. In the end, however, rights granted now on the sly to only a relative few high-flying gay executives will inevitably trickle down to their local counterparts. As with trickle-down economics, however, those waiting for tangible improvement in their lives are, understandably, growing impatient.

Anti-discrimination legislation protecting gays in the workplace and in public life, now commonplace in much of the West, is still a long way off here, and recognition of gay marriage even farther away. But, thanks to Hong Kong's relentless pursuit of its economic interests - which includes attracting the best foreign talent to the city, no matter the color, creed or sexual orientation of that talent - the agenda of the city's increasingly vocal gay community is on the advance, albeit slowly.

Although city officials only begrudgingly accept it, Hong Kong hosts an annual gay-pride parade, but that usually features campy displays of homosexuality, often garbed in provocative pink, that mostly serve to reinforce local stereotypes and prejudices. And gay-rights organizations such as Horizons and the Hong Kong Ten Percent Club have been up and running for more than 20 years. In all that time, however, victories - both legal and attitudinal - have been few and far between.

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