As a result of an individual petition, the Supreme Court in China has issued a statement clarifying the application of laws protecting minorities in China and their validity in cases of discriminatory speech on issues of sexuality, gender identity and gender expression. This statement includes guidelines on judgements and a clear explanation of how the law applies.
To implement the provisions of laws such as the Constitution, the Civil Code, and the Employment Promotion Law, and to effectively safeguard citizens' personal dignity against infringement, the Supreme People's Court hereby clarifies the following adjudication rules:
First, regarding cases involving the public insult or defamation of an individual's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, people's courts generally deem such acts to constitute an infringement of general personality rights; they order the cessation of the infringement, a formal apology, and compensation for emotional distress, thereby explicitly establishing the illegality of discriminatory speech and conduct based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
Second, in the contexts of recruitment, hiring, job reassignment, or dismissal, should an employer engage in differential treatment on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, people's courts shall, in accordance with the law, determine that the employer has committed employment discrimination; they shall order the revocation of the relevant decisions, compensation for losses, and other remedies, thereby explicitly prohibiting unreasonable discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression within the sphere of employment.
Third, should a school impose inappropriate disciplinary measures against students—or fail to fulfill its administrative duties, thereby leading to campus bullying—on the grounds of the students' sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, people's courts shall, in accordance with the law, hold the school liable, thereby reinforcing schools' obligation to protect students' personal liberty and dignity. These cases collectively demonstrate the people's courts' unequivocal stance: that the legitimate rights and interests of sexual minorities are entitled to equal protection under the law, and that any unreasonable discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression is strictly prohibited by law.
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Moving forward, we will continue to systematically review cases nationwide involving the protection of sexual minorities' rights and interests, summarize adjudication rules, and standardize adjudication criteria. At appropriate junctures, we will formalize established adjudication rules through various mechanisms—such as judicial interpretations, conference minutes, guiding cases, reference cases, and exemplary cases—to enhance the provision of legal norms. Furthermore, we will incorporate topics such as the protection of personality rights into judicial training programs, thereby ensuring the protection of citizens' personal liberty and dignity in accordance with the law.” — Reply to the "Proposal on the Application of Law to Explicitly Prohibit Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Judicial Adjudication"
lol that is a comically evil biography. I will keep in mind. But in this case, the content is a word for word mirror of your own posted link. I still can't tell if there is any reason to believe in the legitimacy of this story or not. Is it a chain letter fantasy or something more substantial? is there any other source? Is the account Neutral Rainbow known?
By some measures, being picked up by some VOA-ass news blog might even cast more doubt on the OP. If the main meat of the Neutral Rainbow's post regarding plans by the SPC is true, then it is some kind of error or internal conflict leading to the post being deleted. (Assuming that the account wasn't engaged in something else that led to the deletion of all their posts.) But at the end of the day, SPC is stronger than ye power tripping mods of qq.com (especially in the authoritarian 1984-like hellscape that is PRC according to Qiang), so the progress of LGBTQ people is assured. Is that really the kind of news this site is interested in? Now that it is deleted, the story can be told as "Chinese censors remove account and posts advocating for gay and trans people's human rights".
Yep. I translated and read it before posting, it's certainly the same as it was.
Right. I was chatting about this with a friend and we came up with two possibilities:
We came up with the second possibility when discussing how trans issues have absolutely blown up and the focus on trans people has set back progress. If trans issues had stayed in the background where people didn't care about them then trans issues would have simply continued to see progress and improvements. Instead they got weaponised by the right to motivate and galvanise reactionaries.
The censor in China is a black box. We can ultimately only completely speculate upon the whys of anything they do. There are no answers. But one thing that leans me towards possibility two over possibility one is that these issues have seen nothing but progress in China, there have been no setbacks, it has only marched forwards. Does that sound consistent with a state that is actively suppressing progress? It doesn't to me. Russia is quite clearly actively suppressing progress but China's results do not seem consistent in comparison. So the second possibility that they censor things for the purpose of preventing reaction seems quite plausible to me.
Ultimately we can not know one way or another, and if these were the reasons for the action taken they would certainly never say so as it would undermine it.
so forgetting about the post being deleted, do you have reason to believe it was true in the first place?
Only that it looked fairly legit and Chinese friends said it was worded the way you would expect it to be. If it was fake then it was exceptional.
Like imagine someone writing a supreme court statement for the US, there would be some weird things that stand out about it if it wasn't written completely flawlessly. I couldn't find anyone that could fault it.
And if it was fake and yet got significant traction online, why not officially say it was not a real reply made by them?
After I thought a few more, I decided the idea of this being a plan to sort things out for LGBTQ people without attracting attention is illogical. It would be possible to apply this strategy when the activities were taking out of view and without much participation of the general population. For example, having decent healthcare available, nobody need really notice it.
But the point of laws is to modify behavior. You cannot secretly, quietly change how laws are enforced. Nobody will know about the new law, or the new interpretation, so how can they comply? It doesn't make any sense.
Furthermore, I don't think the discord about these things is just a forgone outcome of them having a natural small degree of publicity. It is due to the intentional agitation of bigots, very well funded and connected by agents of capital. Using it as they do requires constant care and attention from these people.
You have kind of cooked up a sort of "trust the plan"-type positive conspiracy theory tbh.
Legal documents use standardized format and language, so that they may be clearly understood by anyone with the required expertise. There is no reason to think any kind of legal document should be difficult to forge, in terms of the wording. Any lawyer framiliar with the appropriate area of law could mock up a statement to say pretty much anything. Really just a grasp of formal writing is required. What is so exceptional about this? Are your friends in regular secret communication with the chinese courts? Maybe they do have a special way of writing which is not obvious in translation.
But for me, just looking on their website, I find a few sample documents of the sort to compare. I chose just based on topics that I thought wouldn't be overly technical, in the sections that seem to be potential
Here are things I notice that make them look like very usual legal documents from any country:
published on the website of the relevant court
dates: on which become effective; publication; when meetings were conducted
referencing prior relevant document dates for reference
authors
attributed to SPC
attributed to subordinate body, e.g. "Press Bureau of the Supreme People's Court", district etc
individual people, e.g. at the bottom see "Responsibilities Editor"
citations throughout to specific laws generally as well as the particular portions, e.g:
But the main thing is the improbability of basic claim that something called "Research Office" would be in a position to secretly make promises of sweeping changes to interpretation of existing legislation. Very strange and unwieldy way to conduct a legal system suggesting an unstable jurisprudence.
I think this question is better posed in the inverse. If it was real, why not officially take responsibility. Very sneaky of them. As to why not refute a forgery, has anybody asked them? has any publication except that VOA-ass one covered it? Are they even aware of it? I wouldn't expect even a small municipal government to issue a formal reply to every joke or hoax posted on social media. That is silly.
All I am asking is if there is any reason to believe this is real but all there is is baking. The original claim was that this was widely circulated among queer activists. So have others acknowledged they got it as well? Or is just this one random account still.