Chinese LGBT activist Peng Yanhui (彭燕辉) visited the U.S.-Asia Law Institute on Friday, April 22 to share his experiences with NYU Law students and scholars.
Peng is currently a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. He founded LGBT Rights Advocacy China (同志平等权益促进会) in 2013 to advance LGBT equality through China’s legal system, but shut the organization down last year because of the increased political sensitivity of gender rights advocacy. Since 2020, authorities have banned “effeminate” men from appearing on television or movies, ended the annual Shanghai Pride festival, and taken other steps to remove LGBT-related information and advocacy from the public discourse.
These moves came as a shock after a period in which advocates had scored gains in court and public opinion. Peng’s own organization helped bring 13 impact litigation cases beginning in 2014, when he successfully sued the Chinese Internet giant Baidu for publishing the advertising of conversion therapy clinics. Four other cases also were successful. LGBT Rights Advocacy China also led a campaign – joined by an estimated 180,000 persons – to include same-sex marriage in the Civil Code then being drafted. However, the campaign was not successful and the Civil Code, which was approved in 2020 and took effect in 2021, maintains traditional definitions of marriage and family.
Asked the reasons for the 2020 chill, Peng noted that all kinds of grassroots civil society organizations working in other issue areas also have faced tighter supervision and controls. Ideological concerns, suspicion that LGBT activism is promoted by foreign governments, and concerns about China’s declining birthrate are important but secondary factors, he said. “We still have some space,” he said. “We try to engage more with academia and business to work on diversity and inclusion.” He said his own focus is on research to better document the actual social situation of the LGBT community.
It was the first time since the start of the Covid pandemic that the U.S.-Asia Law Institute hosted an outside speaker on campus.
By: Katherine Wilhelm