The National Basketball League has yet to comment after a Chinese court ruled that homosexuality is a “psychological disorder.”
Recently a court in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu ruled that being gay is a disorder and cited Chinese academic research to justify the position. This ruling by the Jiangsu court’s rule upholds a lower court’s ruling, the New York Post reported.
LGBTQ activists in China have slammed the rulings calling them “random and baseless.”
“The editor of the textbook apparently used viewpoints that do not match society’s perception of sexual minorities today,” said Ah Qiang, a spokesperson for PFLAG in China.
The ruling seems to run contrary to the 1997 decriminalization of homosexuality in China, not to mention the 2001 removal of homosexuality from China’s official lists of mental disorders.
Still, the NBA remains silent on the ruling made by their multibillion-dollar partners in the Chinese government, despite their claims to be staunch supporters of the LGBTQ community.
The NBA famously canceled its 2017 All-Star Game that was scheduled for Charlotte, North Carolina, because of the state’s bathroom law that restricted use of state-run bathrooms to people’s birth gender. The league claimed to be standing on principle.
At the time, NBA chief Adam Silver said that North Carolina’s law was a “bright-line test” for a boycott of the state. He added that gay and transgender rights were core values of the league
“But what we have stated is, our values are league-wide values in terms of equality and inclusion,” Silver told the media in 2017, “that is paramount to this league and all of the members of the NBA family. Those jurisdictions that are considering legislation that is similar to HB2, are on notice that that is an important factor for us in deciding where we take a special event like an All-Star game.”
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