Fwd: How newly elected district Councillors could promote rights for LGBT+ community in Hong Kong

[Simon H WANG]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Simon H WANG <simo...@hkbu.edu.hk>
Date: Mon, Jan 20, 2020 at 2:31 PM
Subject: How newly elected district Councillors could promote rights for LGBT+ community in Hong Kong
To: Letters to the Editor <let...@scmp.com>
Cc: Benedict J. L. Rowlett <brow...@hkbu.edu.hk>

We refer to the election victory of a number of district council candidates who are openly gay and lesbian, reflecting a positive shift towards the visibility of the LGBT+ community in Hong Kong at the district level.  Although the rights of sexual minorities were not the focus of their election platforms, we hope these candidates would inspire more members of the public to speak up for the LGBT+ community.  One issue that deserves more attention from the newly elected district councillors and the public is how the Hong Kong Public Libraries should handle children’s books on LGBT+ issues in order to cultivate open-minded attitudes about non-normative sexualities.  

In June 2018, a pressure group, allegedly promoting traditional family values, celebrated on Facebook its successful campaign against LGBT-themed children’s books as the Public Libraries decided to move ten books featuring same-sex parents and other LGBT+ themes to closed stack sections in response to the group’s complaints.  The decisions were made, according to the public libraries, to ensure children would be supervised when reading these books, even though library professionals believed the titles were neutral and did not actively promote same-sex marriage. 

In response to our inquiries, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department could not provide access data of closed-stack items, making it impossible to assess the impact of their decisions on the freedom of information and expression among library patrons. The government also refused to answer our questions regarding the public libraries’ decisions to remove other books from the general stack, the general mechanisms of dealing with complaints about the books, and their policies on books dealing with politically sensitive topics.  It is regrettable that the government rejected our application for information on a range of issues related to censorship based on the fact that the decision on LGBT-themed books is subject to an ongoing judicial review. 

Although a recent survey by the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found a significant rise in public support for the rights of sexual minorities, government institutions such as the Hong Kong Public Libraries continue to act cautiously and with little transparency when it comes to their position on LGBT+ issues. We therefore hope those newly elected to public office seize on the momentum of changing public opinion by challenging the government and its institutions to provide a clearer plan of action towards promoting inclusivity and representation for LGBT+ people in Hong Kong.

Benedict Rowlett, Simon Wang, Kowloon Tong

Phone number of Ben: 68790278

Phone number of Simon: 51998025     

Simon Wang, Ph.D.

Lecturer

Language Centre 

Hong Kong Baptist University 

Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong 

http://lc.hkbu.edu.hk/staff_simon.php  

Writing for the Public Project 

https://sites.google.com/a/hkbu.edu.hk/write4public/home

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