Fridae

A Chinese man filed a case on March 13 against US-listed Baidu for promoting in its search results gay conversion therapy provided by a psychological consultancy.

A court in Beijing has Dec 19 ruled in favor of a Chinese gay man seeking recourse to compensation from a private psychological counseling center that used electric shocks in order to change his sexuality. The 30-year-ol plaintiff who goes by the name Xiao Zhen said the counseling center had been swindling people by offering conversion therapy treatment, according to China Daily.

The Haidian District People's Court in Beijing ordered Xinyu Piaoxiang, the psychological counseling center, to publicly issue an apology on its website for promoting such treatments it provided to Zhen. 

The court ordered the center to pay a compensation of 3,500 yuan (US$562) to Zhen  who went there for treatment in February after he found the Chongqing-based counseling center through the promotions on US-listed Baidu, the fifth most frequented search engine in the world.

Zhen said that the one-hour therapy session cost him about 3,000 yuan and which included him being asked to imagine him being with another man and then administered an electric shock to his genitals when he was aroused.

Zhen had filed a lawsuit demanding an apology and compensation from the center and from Baidu. The court however has rejected his demand for an apology and compensation from Baidu.

Li Duilong, Zhen's lawyer was quoted as saying that the court ruling in favor of compensation and an apology would set an example for those with similar experiences to stand up and fight for their rights. Li said the court had also ruled that "homosexuality" did not require treatment.

The ruling is considered by Chinese LGBT groups as a landmark decision because of the deeply held Chinese belief that children are required to marry and bear offspring to continue the family line. It is also nation's first ever 'gay conversion’ lawsuit. Elsewhere in the world, therapies that purport to turn gay, lesbian or bisexual people straight have been discredited.

The American Psychiatric Association says undergoing such treatment risks depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior. The United Kingdom Council for Pyschotherapy calls the practice unethical.

The United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights has already in 2011 criticized “gay conversion therapies” as “unscientific, potentially harmful and contributing to stigma.”

In China, however, conversion clinics have operated for decades, and there has been no such outcry from medical or official bodies even though China legalized adult same-sex relations in 1997 and removed “homosexuality” from an official list of psychiatric diseases in 2001.