An official invitation by the Hong Kong government to a psychiatrist who says he can teach gay people to give up homosexuality has inspired a protest on the other side of the world.
New York gay and lesbian rights activists will today take to the streets outside the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office in Manhattan.
Dr Hong Kwai-wah was asked to speak to social workers about giving guidance to young gay people.
He has courted controversy as chairman of the controversial Hong Kong-based New Creation Association. The Christian organisation says on its website that it helps those in the process of 'giving up a lifestyle of homosexuality' through counselling.
The controversy has touched a nerve some 13,000 kilometres away because it appears to critics that the government is legitimising conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is the practice of changing someone's sexual orientation through therapy - based on the assumption that homosexuality is a sickness.
Among the groups due to join in the demonstration were Gay Asian-Pacific Islander Men of New York; Q-Wave: Queer, Asian, Visible, Empowered; and the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission
'It is appalling to us that conversion therapy is being exported to our countries of origin,' Dennis Chin, of the Gay Asian-Pacific Islander group, said. 'It's cultural colonialism, plain and simple.'