The Central Library in Hong Kong found itself on the battlefield for gay equality in China when local activist Betty Grisoni, co-founder of the lesbian organisation Les Peches and co-director of the LGBT Pink Season cultural festival, demanded libary officials run a disclaimer to go with their inclusion of the controversial A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Written by American psychologist Joseph Nicolosi, the text classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder and promotes "gay conversion therapy," the pseudo-scientific idea that homosexual men and women can be made heterosexual through medical or psychological means. 

Like Us on Facebook

Grisoni is demanding the library put a warning on the book because it espouses practices universally denounced by health ministries and medical organizations throughout the West. Gay conversion therapy is banned in California and New Jersey, and the director of a gay conversation camp in South Africa is on trial for murder after three boys under his supervision died.

"Given widespread virulent prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping against sexual minorities, publications directly promoting homophobia should be carefully handled by public libraries," she told the Gay Star News. Grisoni stated she does not think the book should be removed for freedom of expression, but that potential readers should be made aware of its shaky scientific principles.

Condemned by Mao Zedong, homosexuality was later decriminalized in 1997 and declassified as a mental disorder in China in 2001, but the conservative cultural landscape of the country picks up where Chairman Mao left off. Undaunted, activists took unprecedented action by launching a lawsuit against a gay conversion clinic in Chongqing in June.

In A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Nicolosi claims parents, through judicious upbringing methods, can fend off a homosexual "outcome" in their child and cites the work of other scientists to back up his hypothesis. However, several of those same scientists charge Nicolosi, who holds a PhD from the accredited California School of Professional Psychology, misinterpreted their work and have come out publicly against the book.

Central Library officials say the text, on the shelves since 2005, has been checked out 89 times without complaint or feedback, and have not responded to the request of a warning.