Normal, China.

The Chinese Psychiatric Association decides that being gay is no longer a disease

Sometime in April, the Chinese Psychiatric Association will publish its new diagnostic guidelines. Noticeably absent from the list of mental disorders will be one that has been included for decades: homosexuality. As of this year, being gay no longer means being mentally ill, a major leap forward for lesbians and gays in China. And helping to make the change happen was a group of Chinese activists in the United States and their American supporters.

"This change was brought about by a lot of sources," says ErYan Lin, a Chinese national living in the Washington, D.C., area and general coordinator of the Chinese Society for the Study of Sexual Minorities. "We provided a lot of gay-affirmative information for gay leaders as well as for members of the CPA."

Under the new guidelines issued by the the association, homosexuality will no longer be considered a mental illness. The change reflects an about-face by the group; as recently as 1994, a handbook published by the CPA strongly stated its opposition to the World Health Organization's call for accepting homosexuality. The move brings China in line with most Western nations, which do not consider being gay an illness.

However, the association did not move toward complete acceptance of homosexuality. "They kept `sexual orientation disorder,'" says Wan Yan Hai, a public-health researcher and gay rights activist in China. "It says that sexuality itself is not necessarily abnormal, but somebody might have mental problems dealing with it. Some people may want to change if they are unhappy." Under those circumstances, a Chinese psychiatrist would be able to try to "cure" the unhappy patient of his or her homosexuality.

The reservation is similar to the one adopted by the American Psychiatric Association when it "depathologized" homosexuality in 1973. It wasn't until 1986 that the APA removed all reservations about sexual orientation.

"The Chinese psychiatric profession had a lot of internal barriers [to change]," ErYan says. "A lot of professionals don't have access to recent information, so they still consider homosexuality a disease. This was a compromise between the two sides."

Despite the lingering problem of reparative therapy, activists say the CPA's move remains a real victory for gays in China. "There are still too many doctors who feel the right way to treat gay people is lobotomies, electric shock treatment, drugs to make them throw up when they become aroused," says Lyle Henry, a U.S. gay activist who helped lobby for the change. "There are people in the CPA very opposed to this change. The whole Confucian society is very negative about being gay. This is just one step, but it is such an important step because it's getting talked about and takes away that fallback position that everybody who is gay is sick."

The group decided in 1996 to set up a task force to study the classification of mental disorders. "When we heard that news, we found we had a chance to push the CPA to change the policy toward homosexuality," Wan says. What followed was a behind-the-scenes effort to convince the task force that the association's stand on homosexuality was outmoded.

Wan met with task force members and helped produce a newsletter sent to mental hospitals around China to clarify the issues involved in depathologizing homosexuality. In 1997 he was invited by the University of Southern California's Center for Feminist Research and the One Institute, a Los Angeles--based group that supports education and research on gay concerns, to do further study. In the United States, a group of activists set up the Chinese Society for the Study of Sexual Minorities. "Some students and scholars combined as a network to promote research in China and to translate and introduce what has happened in America and other parts of the world to Chinese society," Wan says. "We kept connected with members of the CPA. We provided information and helped them do research."

"When Wan and I started going around China in '96, having person-to-person contacts, we talked to people who had never met anyone who was really gay and hadn't been referred to them for being mentally ill," Henry says. "We went to a number of psychiatric hospitals. We talked to a lot of different people in various cities."

The task force members were open to changing the old classification. For example, researchers sought out gay men and lesbians not only in mental health clinics but in the overall gay population, providing a fuller portrait of gay life. "They showed some sensitivity to the issues," Wan says.

For gay and lesbian Chinese, the psychiatric association's decision removes a final official barrier to tolerance. In 1997 the government eliminated the criminal category of hooliganism, which was used to prosecute gays. "[Homosexuality] used to be called a perversion," ErYan says. "Now there's an official statement saying it's normal. The people in China have traditional respect for scholarship and knowledge. If the scientists say it is so, people will believe it."

Still, the road to acceptance is a difficult one for Chinese gays. "In China it was a traditional obligation to bring off-spring to the family," ErYan says. "If one does not get married or marries someone of the same sex, there are no children. For many, that is a psychological barrier."

While gay culture is not nearly as developed in China as in the United States, it is growing as attitudes toward homosexuality relax. "I think society has become more tolerant and supportive," Wan says. "A lot of people have come out to friends, families, and colleagues. I know a lot of people who have wholly come out." He says there is a national gay hotline as well as several social groups, including a lesbian organization called Beijing Sisters. Also helping gays in China is the spread of the Internet. ErYan estimates that there are hundreds of Web sites for gay Chinese.

While the change is a step forward, activists say their work remains cut out for them. "The next step is to have the information reach the mental health professionals," ErYan says. "That will need more work. It takes decades for them to change."

But that does not lessen the impact of the new policy. "Tens of millions of gay Chinese residents became normal in one day," Wan says. "That's really good."

For more information about gay activism in China, go to www.advocate.com