Fridae

The Society for Truth and Light conducted the poll which according to it shows that Hong Kong is a stronghold for traditional marriage and family values, with up to 75 percent of parents holding negative views on gay-rights issues, according to scmp.com.

Hence, any trend among younger parents could eventually lead to conflict with traditional values, it added.

However a gay-advocacy group finds the survey questionable because The Society for Truth and Light used biased questions to get the result it wanted.

The society’s Centre for Life and Ethics Studies interviewed by questionnaire 2,096 parents from 12 kindergartens, primary and secondary schools between August and February.

It found 60 to 75 percent respondents did not want Hong Kong to allow same-sex marriage or adoption, make use of surrogacy procedures or partners to enjoy benefits “as if they were married.”

The report quoted the centre’s research officer Michael Chan Wing-ho as saying that many parents still see “traditional marriage as very important” but a trend of younger parents tending to be more open to the gay rights movement can lead to “inevitable conflicts between them and traditional values.”

About 60 percent of respondents were atheists and 22 per cent Christians; 70 percent were secondary-school graduates and 23 percent had higher education.

About 75 percent disagreed that children should read books describing same-sex relationships as “normal and beautiful,” a similar percentage felt teachers had the right not to teach that “homosexual relationships are normal and beautiful”.

Chan maintains that the education systems of Western countries gave homosexual values an equal status to heterosexual values and that it was the onus of the Hing Kong government not to be influenced by such trends and base its education policies on “healthy family ethics.”

Brian Leung Siu-fai, chief campaigner for gay-rights group Big Love Alliance, found such premises objectionable and the questioned how scientific the society and its research were in its methodology for the survey.

He suspected that it used suggestive questions in the survey and pointed out that the society still used conversion therapy to “treat” people with same-sex orientations and become heterosexuals.

Leung said older people held discriminating views towards the LGBT community because their parents were often lacking knowledge about it as there were no books available on the topic and public figures rarely came out as gay or supported the community.

Legally, prejudices against the LGBT community and discrimination on the basis of sexuality are not banned in Hong Kong although same-sex relations were de-criminalized in 1991.