BEIJING – A court heard opening arguments Tuesday in a case calling for textbooks published by China's Ministry of Education to alter or remove sections calling homosexuality a disease that can be cured. 
 
 Qiu Bai (center) speaks to the media with her lawyer Wang Zhenyu (left) outside a court in Beijing on Tuesday. GREG BAKER / AFP - Getty Images 
 
 A student who goes by the pseudonym Qiu Bai discovered the issue two years ago when as a curious freshman she looked through medical textbooks seeking answers about her own sexual orientation. 
 
 The 20-year-old showed NBC News one of the textbooks — "University Students Mental Health" — which states that gay people can change their sexual orientation through therapy. 
 
 “I thought textbooks should be trustworthy but when I saw these lines, I felt horrible. I was so worried about other people being afraid of gay people, like me," the student at Sun Yat-sen University in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou said. “This is discrimination against homosexuality.” 
 
 The Chinese Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 2001. But a 2014 survey conducted by China’s Tong Cheng Gay and Lesbian Campus Association found that 40 percent of textbooks published in the country after 2001 still classified homosexuality as a psychological disorder. 
 
 Qiu Bai earlier this year wrote an open letter to the Ministry of Education pointing out the errors and requesting corrections. When she got no response, she filed the lawsuit in August. The No. 1 Municipal Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing heard the case on Tuesday and decided to hold a second hearing. 
 
 “I want related departments to admit these errors and I want to have an equal and open discussion with them about these errors,” Qiu Bai said. “This case is not even close to ending. Unless the Ministry of Education take some real actions to change this, I won’t give it up." ||||| 
 
 Gay rights activists outside a Beijing courthouse on Tuesday. (AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 Qiu Bai was looking for information on human sexuality. What she found was homophobia disguised as fact. 
 
 Chinese textbooks called homosexuality a "disorder." Some suggested shock therapy as a “cure.” One book even dismissed the very possibility of same-sex love. 
 
 Outraged, the college student decided to challenge China's Ministry of Education in court. It’s a case she hopes will call attention to anti-gay bias and persuade Chinese officials to ban this type of language in state-published books. 
 
 "I have been fighting to make our voices heard for such a long time, and I finally have the opportunity,” said Qiu, who uses a pseudonym, greeting supporters outside a Beijing courthouse on Tuesday. 
 
 She was joined by Xin Ying, executive director of the Beijing LGBT Center, and young activists who carried a rainbow flag and waved signs. “This could be a milestone case in the history of the gay rights movement,” Xin said. 
 
 Qiu's lawsuit is part of a nascent push to use China's courts to advance the fight for LGBT rights. Amid a sweeping crackdown on rights lawyers and activists, campaigners are finding new ways to use Chinese law to call attention to discrimination. 
 
 In late 2014, a Chinese court ordered a clinic to compensate a man who underwent "gay conversion therapy" designed to literally shock him straight. Because China does not yet have a law that protects people from discrimination based on sexual orientation, the case was positioned as a commercial dispute. 
 
 The award was small — about $550 — but the proceedings helped put the issue of gay conversion therapy on the agenda; the case was mentioned at a U.N. review of China's torture record last week, prompting a Chinese representative to acknowledge "real challenges" facing China's LGBT community. 
 
 In September, Beijing-based filmmaker Fan Popo filed a lawsuit against China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) after his documentary about Chinese mothers and their gay and lesbian children disappeared from major Web sites. He heard the censorship directive came from SAPPRFT. They denied it, so he sued to learn more. 
 
 Qiu first raised the textbook issue with school and provincial officials but was unsatisfied with the response, she said. Frustrated, she sent a letter to the Ministry of Education requesting more information. By law, they had 15 days to reply or to request more time. They did not, so she filed suit. 
 
 The Ministry of Education eventually complied with their request and on Tuesday Qiu and her lawyer, Wang Zhenyu, met with representatives of the Ministry of Education to discuss the portrayal of homosexuality in state-published textbooks. 
 
 The ministry is now looking into the issue, Wang said, calling it "a very good sign." 
 
 "Before they would not think about this as a problem, but now they started paying attention to this — after the suit, they had to face the problem," he said. 
 
 Whatever the outcome, activists said they are pleased to see what's sometimes dismissed as a private, personal matter discussed in a public way. 
 
 China decriminalized gay sex in the late 1990s, but stigma persists, as documented in a comprehensive 2014 report by the United Nations Development Program. Though China's big cities have thriving gay scenes, employment discrimination is rampant and many people stay closeted at work. 
 
 Discussing gender or sexual identity with family is often tough here, and there is little to no sex education at school. That makes this correcting of textbooks critical, experts said. 
 
 Li Yinhe, one of China's most-recognized sex researchers, said calling homosexuality a disease or disorder was "utterly wrong" and particularly worrying because students tend to assume that statements in textbooks are true. 
 
 Wei Tingting, one of the five Chinese feminists detained last spring, knows that firsthand. Wei said that as a student she was swayed by the type of "poisonous" pseudo-science that passes for fact in some textbooks — so much so that she once offered tips to help "cure" a friend. 
 
 "Because textbooks are seen as having authority, everyone, including the students, the teachers and the parents, believes them," she said. 
 
 —Gu Jinglu reported from Beijing.
– A Chinese student is suing her government over medical textbooks that classify homosexuality as a mental disorder that can be cured through shock therapy. Twenty-year-old Qui Bai—whose family turned away from her when they found out she was gay—was looking for answers about her sexuality two years ago when she found the offending passages in textbooks published by China's education ministry, NBC News reports. "I thought textbooks should be trustworthy, but when I saw these lines I felt horrible," she says. "This is discrimination against homosexuality." According to the Washington Post, the ministry ignored Qui's letter asking it to correct the books—the Chinese Psychiatric Association hasn't classified homosexuality as a mental disorder since 2001—and she filed a lawsuit in August. The New York Times reports two-dozen supporters waved signs and a rainbow flag outside a Chinese courthouse during a discussion between Qui and education officials Tuesday. While nothing was settled, Qui and her lawyer say it was a minor victory to even have the discussion while China continues to crack down on activists and human-rights lawyers. Discrimination against homosexuals is prevalent in China, and experts say with little in the way of sex education, medically accurate textbooks are essential, according to the Post. "Because textbooks are seen as having authority, everyone—including the students, the teachers, and the parents—believes them," one activist tells the Post. NBC reports 40% of textbooks still classified homosexuality as a disease as of 2014. "This case is not even close to ending,"Qui says. "I won't give it up."