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Opening the Path to Marriage Equality Asian American Lesbians Reach Out to Their Families and Communities

Trinity A. Ordona

Introduction

After decades of contentious politicking that revealed deep fissures in American society, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2013 and 2015 in favor of marriage equality for same- sex couples.1 Like elsewhere, gaining support in the Asian American com- munity for same- sex marriage was an uphill battle. Prior to 1988, the Asian American community generally treated its lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) members with shame and isolation.2 Then it began to change. That year was a turn- ing point for the community, in part, because of a turning point in my own life.

On June 25, 1988, Desiree Thompson and I were married in a wedding cer- emony attended by more than 120 family members and friends. Not only were we married before it was popular or political to do so but my mother, Segunda, made both our wedding dresses! Our story has been documented in print and film,3 and each time, when I shared my mother’s part, everyone got it. It was her way to show her love and acceptance of my new family, no explanation required. In Asian culture, where family is at the center of “all that is important,” I knew undoubtedly that “it was OK to be gay.”

Today, a notable majority of Asian Americans— roughly seven in ten (69 percent)— support same- sex marriage, a greater percentage than in all other racial/ ethnic groups in the nation.4 This development clearly indicates a shift in the Asian American community beyond tolerance to acceptance of its LGBTQ members. How did this change happen? After all, a court ruling sets law, but it cannot adju- dicate the heart.

To explain this change, published analyses generally link modern- day gay and lesbian couples’ demands for marriage equality with the century- long struggle of Asian Americans for civil rights and against discriminatory antimiscegenation, immigration, and citizenship laws.5 For community leaders, organizations, and mainstream and Asian- language media, this connection brought the issue to Asian American groups. My research findings and direct experience, however, present a new and less known contribution to this analysis. In this chapter, I argue this transformation was facilitated by the preceding decades of deliberate interactions of “out” Asian American LGBTQ people and our families, especially parents.

Our Voices, Our Histories : Asian American and Pacific Islander Women, edited by Shirley Hune, and Gail M. Nomura, New York University Press, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csueastbay/detail.action?docID=6033271. Created from csueastbay on 2023-02-20 02:33:09.

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As a leader and cofounder of API Family Pride,6 the first organization created to support families of Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ people, I was a participant in and observer of this grassroots “family acceptance” move- ment. Barely perceptible to anyone outside, this soft- spoken campaign counseled scores of family members; educated hundreds through workshops, conferences, and gatherings; and shared our stories through videos, films, booklets, stories, pamphlets, flyers, and exhibits distributed to thousands in the United States and abroad. The findings here are based on my own active engagement and leader- ship in LGBTQ organizations, participant observation, and interviews with key activists from the 1970s to the present.

Throughout the 1980s, while Asian American gay men were battling for their lives in the AIDS pandemic,7 Asian American lesbians took up the challenge to win acceptance from our families. This included promoting “coming out” resources created by “out” Asian American lesbians, gay men, and bisexual and transgender people and, in the 1990s and beyond, creating new resources, some bilingual, for Asian families in the United States and in Asia. There was much exchange, support, and sharing of resources across language, ethnicity, age, gen- der, sexuality, and even national boundaries.

Before there were organized national or statewide political campaigns for marriage equality, many lesbians struggled for and received acceptance from our families, held commitment ceremonies, and raised children. In staying the course and charting this hitherto unknown space and place, out Asian Ameri- can lesbians and our families played a prescient role in the struggle for marriage equality— in the forefront and behind the scenes— by creating the first pathway to family acceptance and reconciliation. Twenty years later, our next step was to openly advocate for marriage equality— the legal recognition of what were already acknowledged relationships in our families.

This chapter explores how homophobic “Asian” cultural values challenged the Asian American community and LGBTQ family members; discusses new cultural patterns, especially films, that changed negative attitudes about being Asian and gay; identifies new cultural practices that brought families together with LGBTQ members; and considers the emerging prospects of acceptance, reconciliation, and diverse family formations and their positive outcomes for the Asian American community. Asian American lesbians played a leading role in shifting LGBTQ people from marginalization to greater inclusion within their families, community, and US society. While there were many more players and events of this movement than this chapter can record, these are some highlights of our story.

Before 1988: Old Cultural Values and the Shame of Being Gay

According to Webster’s dictionary, folklore is “all of the unwritten traditional beliefs, legends, sayings, customs, etc., of a culture.”8 Looking back at the Asian

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community’s values and traditional beliefs about homosexuality, it was almost impossible to be Asian and gay back then. Among those interviewed for my doctoral ethnohistory study of Asian American lesbians in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s, there were only a few who were out. Kitty Tsui, one of the most prominent, was rejected by her family and the Asian American community. She shared, “[My] family stopped speaking to me. No one in the community invited me to read my poetry anymore. I was shut out. I did not exist.” After Kitty’s rebuff, very few Asian American lesbians came out to their families. For the next two decades, most generally stayed “under the radar,” favoring personal gather- ings over explicitly lesbian events.9

A 1989 news story of a San Francisco family captured the dilemma. In “Asians Silenced by Family Ties: Gays Fear Rejection of Kin and Loss of Identity,” sister and brother Ana and Rafael Chang related the tragic break with their family when they came out to their immigrant Chinese parents and became a “shameful family secret.” Their parents barred them from visiting the family home in the East Bay, and relatives and friends were told they had left the state. Only an uncle and two other brothers accepted and still spoke to them.10

The elder Changs’ silence about their homosexual children was sadly typical and modeled by US president Ronald Reagan (1981– 1989), who was conspicu- ously silent on the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS, especially on homosexual men.11 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the disease’s horror and the entrenched homophobic disgust that accompanied it were a daily morsel of the American diet. The fear and reality of contracting the deadly disease coupled with the pos- sibility of losing one’s family were so strong that most Asian American LGBTQ people were in the closet, especially to parents and relatives. How could this ever change? It started at the movies.

Film: Depicting Fact through Fiction

Film can powerfully carry a story to thousands, sometimes millions of people and reach beyond for generations to come. The prevailing story of homosexuals in society and film had been of isolated men and women living in the shad- ows and keeping the secrets of their “abnormal” lifestyle away from the eyes of “normal” society. When the Oscar- winning film Philadelphia (1993) tackled AIDS and homophobia, it signaled a shift that Hollywood films would challenge the marginalization of gay and lesbian people. In the ensuing decades, films, including those of Asian/Asian American filmmakers played a persuasive role in presenting accessible, complex portraits of LGBTQ people that helped transform people’s attitudes.

In 1993 as well, then- emerging Taiwanese director/auteur Ang Lee released The Wedding Banquet, an award- winning romantic comedy film about a gay Taiwanese immigrant man who marries a mainland Chinese woman to placate

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his parents and get her a green card. Lee’s widely acclaimed gay cowboy movie, Brokeback Mountain (2005), later garnered significant international attention and honors. Although the film was banned in China, the official China Daily newspaper said, “Ang Lee is the pride of Chinese people all over the world, and he is the glory of Chinese cinematic talent.”12

From Canada, South Asian filmmaker, Deepa Mehta, produced, Fire, a feature- length movie that made its American premiere at the 1996 NAATA (National Asian American Telecommunications Association) Film Festival in San Francisco. Shown in Hindi and English, it portrays an evolving lesbian rela- tionship between two Delhi sisters- in- law who are both trapped in joyless mar- riages. The film was received with great enthusiasm in the United States, but the controversial narrative shocked India.13

From the 1980s to the present, gay Asian American documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong has brought attention to both Asian American and LGBTQ identi- ties, histories, and issues. His work has reached extensive audiences in the Asian American community here and abroad.14

It was through a film during this period that the old story line of the ill- fated shameful lesbian was finally transformed on the screen for the Asian American community. A close examination of the first feature- length story of an Asian American lesbian, Saving Face (2004),15 is warranted.

Saving Face— How to Be Gay and Asian Too

Written and directed by Taiwanese American lesbian and first- time filmmaker Alice Wu, the film opens on Wil (short for Wilhelmina), a young profession- ally accomplished Chinese American woman surgeon. Wil is a good Chinese daughter and dutifully goes to “Planet China,” where local Chinese immigrant families not- so- subtly matchmake for their children. Wil’s “Ma” is forty- eight years old, widowed, and single. Speaking Mandarin throughout most of the film, she clucks her disapproval of Wil’s choice of “men’s clothes.” Amid the eating, dancing, chatting, and avoiding behaviors, Wil notices Vivian. Due to Vivian’s persistence, they fall in love. But Wil hides her lesbianism because, months before, Ma had found out and disapproved. Though a subplot exposes Ma’s own dilemma (she’s pregnant and without a husband), the tension of parental disap- proval of Wil’s transgressive sexuality runs through the film.

In a typical white American gay story line, this coming- out conflict might lead to a confrontation with a brave “take it or leave it” mentality as the hero strikes out alone. Here, however, the cultural nuances of a coming- out process unfold differently. Wil does not confront her mom— yet. This deferred approach is what most Asian American LGBTQ people practice when it comes to their family. Being in the closet is a problem, but likely a temporary one until the family can come to a place of acceptance. This process requires a culturally attuned mindset

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to orchestrate and evolve in each Asian American family, and Saving Face shows how one family does so.

Here, Wil’s mother is accused by her own father of not being a good daughter. Because of her unwed pregnancy, she is kicked out of the house and faces her father’s anger for “his shame” and loss of standing in the community. Ma’s public disgrace runs counterpoint to Wil’s own not- so- secret dilemma. Wil is awkward, insecure, and afraid to be herself. Under the pressure, Wil breaks up with Vivian. Heartbroken, she finally says, “Ma, I love you. And I’m gay.” Ma flatly counters, “How can you say those two things at once . . . that you love me, then throw that in my face? I am not a bad mother. My daughter is not gay.” When Wil tearfully replies, “Then maybe I shouldn’t be your daughter,” Ma answers by agreeing with her father to marry Mr. Cho, a man she does not love. Wil is left behind, alone.

But Ma, too, gives up trying to be the perfect daughter and leaves her father and her fiancé at the altar. In the end, the family survives the challenges. In the closing scene, with Vivian and Wil back together, Ma has the last word: “Wil, there’s only one thing left. When are you going to have a baby?!” Startled, Wil spits out her drink and the movie ends with a laugh. For Ma, a good daughter who is true to herself and marries for love trumps a dutiful daughter who goes against her own feelings and marries to please her family. In Wil’s case, a good daughter is a happy one who is also true to herself.

Saving Face has a happy ending, but this was not make- believe for many Asian American lesbians. Its character development reflected the private struggles and transformations of many Asian American families with LGBTQ members. By the time the film premiered in the Asian American community in 2005, Asian American lesbians had forged a path that validated same- sex families as an acceptable option within traditional Asian family values. This is how we did it.

Informal Gatherings of Asian American Gays and Lesbians

Getting married often changes your life in big ways. It did for Desiree and me. Until our wedding in 1988, I did not know for sure whether I was fully accepted by my family. I had kept my personal life to myself and had come out in small ways over the years. But a wedding was a public acknowledgement of what had otherwise been known “only in the family.” Seeing their support, I realized I had kept them out of my life and that many Asian American LGBTQ people were probably doing the same. The following year, we started organizing.

In June 1989, “Gay in America,” a series in the San Francisco Examiner, com- memorated the twentieth anniversary of the New York City Stonewall Rebellion, which launched the modern American LGBTQ movement. Asian American LGBTQ names, faces, and stories were shown throughout the series, includ- ing the Chang family story above.16 My wedding, however, told me that fam- ily acceptance was possible. I called a small group of Asian American lesbian

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women and gay men together,17 and we held the first of many support group potluck dinner meetings to discuss topics like: What does coming out to our families mean? Do we want to? Is this option forever denied? How do we deal with sexism in our families? How does it affect us as lesbians and gays?

The discussions made everyone realize that sexuality is only part of the total person. Yet how could this be conveyed when the typical Asian family does not talk about sex, much less homosexuality? Furthermore, it is believed that one should not talk about family problems outside the family. Tight- knit relation- ships and self- reliant traditions that keep private matters within the Asian family made it virtually impossible to send our parents to PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), a national organization that sponsors drop- in support groups where people share their feelings about having lesbian, bisexual, gay, or transgender family members.18 While Asian family members were known to go to a PFLAG meeting, they generally never returned, and it did not matter whether the hosts were Asian.19

We knew that parents were the key. They were the most important— and most difficult to approach— as the fear of disapproval and being kicked out of the family hung over us. We reviewed the PFLAG materials that were available in English, Chinese, and Japanese and found them lacking. They were perfectly translated but were culturally awkward. For example, saying “I love you” is not what a typical Asian parent would say. Asian- style parental love is expressed in behavior, actions, and body language for the child’s best interests and good future.

At the same time, the larger cultural climate for LGBTQ people was chang- ing across the country, and Asian American LGBTQ people began to break the silence and make ourselves more visible. In August 1992, for example, SALGA (South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association) led the first South Asian LGBTQ contingent in the New York City India Day Parade. In 1993, the first Asian Amer- ican LGBTQ groups participated in San Francisco’s Chinese New Year’s Parade (February 26) and the Japantown Cherry Blossom Festival Parade (April 24). While the majority of marchers showed their faces, not everyone did. The fears of being out to our communities and bringing shame to the family were still present. We knew this had to change.

Helping Asian Parents Come Out

The opportunity came in September 1994 with the panel presentation by Harold and Ellen Kameya of Los Angeles, parents of lesbian daughter, Valerie Kameya, at the thirteenth annual PFLAG International Convention in San Francisco. The Kameyas, already active in PFLAG- LA, were afraid to be interviewed by national media, as their own family in Hawai‘i did not know about Valerie. But with the presence of Asian American supporters that day, the Kameyas bravely related their personal struggles with homophobia, which included changing churches in

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order to understand and accept Valerie. Following a reception for the Kameyas, the idea of videotaped stories featuring Asian American parents with LGBTQ children emerged.

The API- PFLAG Family Project formed, and our video, Coming Out, Coming Home, premiered at the NAATA Film Festival in March 1995.20 Enthusiastically welcomed as “living proof ” that an Asian American gay son or lesbian daughter was not a shame nor catastrophe, the video included one Filipina mother and three Chinese couples sharing their stories of shock, shame, struggle, under- standing, and acceptance of their LGBTQ children. They spoke candidly about their difficult feelings and the mistakes they made by confusing, blaming, and rejecting their children. The parents eloquently stated that their love for their children guided them through a process that opened their hearts and minds. As Paul Yee shared tearfully,

What does it mean to be ‘right’ when you hurt someone and that person is your own child? . . . My experience [is] if you take the risk and come out, struggle, there will be an end of the tunnel. There will be a light, an opening for new possibility and even growth and self- discovery. . . . I have seen this.21

Community Debates the Issue

All these coming out steps for visibility or understanding in our families took place as a national debate in the Japanese American community on same- sex marriage was heating up. It, too, began with small steps. In 1989, Hokubei Mainichi, a San Francisco Japantown community daily newspaper, featured the Asian/Pacific lesbian contingent at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade on its front page.22 The paper also reported on other Asian American LGBTQ events. Such coverage was not welcomed by everyone, and in 1991, a reader expressed his affront at this inclusion in a letter to the editor. The editor, J. K. Yamamoto, responded at length on the front page of the next issue:

Whether or not you approve, these individuals and organizations do exist within the Nikkei community and not just in San Francisco. How should a community newspaper respond to this fact? . . . By whose standard do we decide who is “quali- fied” to be part of the community? . . . How Japanese Americans deal with it will say a lot about who we are as a people.23

Yamamoto’s 1991 comment was foretelling, as the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) became the first people- of- color civil rights organization to support same- sex marriage at its national conference (August 3– 7, 1994). The events that led up to this community- wide struggle and its aftermath are already well documented.24 The importance here is recognizing its historic place in our

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struggle for family acceptance. While the LGBTQ movement sought same- sex marriage political rights, our primary struggle was always with our families, and by extension— and epitomized by the JACL controversy— the larger Asian American community. When long- standing members and officers outed them- selves as LGBTQ people at the JACL gathering, it was a giant step forward. Whether their public outing won anyone over will never be known. But that day, our Japanese American LGBTQ people and allies stood up and fought for us.

Parents Step Forward

Though same- sex marriage support was settled at the national level in JACL, the legal and political struggles in statewide and national levels across the country were not.25 Undaunted, the following year, we took the struggle directly to Asian American communities and churches, this time through our parents as ambassa- dors. A week after Ellen and Harold Kameya spoke to the JACL in New York City in September 1995, their local Methodist Church congregation formally commit- ted “to outreach to Asian American parents and friends of gay and lesbian Asian Americans.”26

The 1997 publication and book tour of Honor Thy Children: One Family’s Jour- ney to Wholeness dramatically redirected the issue away from shame and toward redemption and transformation. Al and Jane Nakatani, a third- generation Japa- nese American couple, lost all three of their sons tragically, including two of whom were gay and had died of HIV/AIDS. The Nakatani parents had pushed their sons, driving one to senseless fatal endangerment and the eldest to leave home, running away from the shame of not meeting up to rigid expectations.27 After reconciling with their youngest son and caring for him until his death from HIV/AIDS, they sold their family home of thirty years in San Jose. Taking their lesson back to their home state, Hawai‘i, they spoke to standing- room- only audi- ences of mostly Japanese Americans. Their tragic story, filled with poignancy and humor, was soon known by everyone in the islands.28

Like the Kameyas and Nakatanis, many of our accepting parents had come out to their families and communities too. From 2004 to 2012, API Family Pride held Family Presentation Banquets as “a public recognition of private courage.” In a masterful role reversal, Asian American adult LGBTQ children gave stirring testimonials of the love, honesty, and integrity that their families and/or allies had shown to them. There was always a flood of tears.

The Power of the Written Word, in Chinese

Recent immigrants comprise the majority of today’s Asian American popula- tion. While many can speak and understand English, the difficult issues are best communicated in their native languages. With more than forty different

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Asian languages and dialects, this task was overwhelming, and without the funds to pay for translations of materials about homosexuality, coming out seemed impossible. A solution developed organically.

Among those gathered to hear the Kameyas at the 1994 PFLAG convention was a small group of Chinese, specifically Taiwanese lesbians. At the Kameyas’ reception, Koko Lin and her friends spoke in Mandarin to Fung Bao, who was present with her gay son, Daniel Bao. They all asked her, How do I come out to my parents? Coming Out, Coming Home, was in English and a good start, but those with new- immigrant families knew that language was a barrier. Another video, produced in 1997, There’s No Name for This,29 featured Chinese lesbians and gay men speaking in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English with Chinese and English subtitles. Imagining how she would do it, Koko came out in this video to her family. As it turns out, this was practice for a coming- out process that would span generations, countries, and continents.

Koko was fifteen years old and the eldest of five children when she immigrated to America with her siblings. Without their parents, who remained in Taiwan to run the family business, Koko bought groceries, cooked meals, paid bills, drove the car, and guided everyone through their schoolwork and new life. By the time Koko met the Kameyas in 1994, she had found love and friendship with other lesbian immigrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Southeast Asia. While most Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area came from southern China, Koko was among the new immigrants from Taiwan and mainland China, where language, food, and culture were different from their Cantonese- speaking compatriots. Over time, this friendship circle became MAPLBN (Mandarin Asian/Pacific Lesbian and Bisexual Network) and was soon propelled into the political frontlines with the creation of its signature project, Beloved Daughter: Family Letter Project (1999).

It started as an effort by MAPLBN women in their thirties to help their younger members by sharing stories of how their families responded— some with concerns, others with support— to their coming out. Some interviewed family members over the phone while others went in person, including flying home to places in the United States and Asia. Margot Yapp, Koko’s girlfriend, received letters of support from both her parents when the couple visited them in Malaysia. More than a dozen families enthusiastically responded, writing letters to the MAPLBN women while a Chinese- English translation/editing team posted them online. When a visi- tor remarked, “We could really use this in Taiwan,” the value of the written word, which for Chinese bridges dialect differences, shone like a bright beacon. Every- one understood. They decided to publish it in Chinese and English, and with the consent of the letter writers, their families were out to the entire Chinese world!

Completed in 1999 and eighty pages in length, the initial five hundred copies of Beloved Daughter were distributed quickly, and another five hundred “disap- peared like water” at the First Chinese Gay and Lesbian (Tonghzi) Conference in

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Figure 19.1. Cover of the first edition of Beloved Daughter: Family Letter Project (1999). Permis- sion given by MAPLBN.

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Hong Kong.30 Later that year, on July 18, the first public reading was held at the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay- affirming congregation in San Fran- cisco. At the reading, Juliet Lin, Koko’s sister, read:

I could no longer hold back the tears. . . . I felt a sudden desire to join forces with her in her struggle. I know for this society to accept and respect homosexuality, a lengthy struggle will be necessary. Regardless whether she is straight or lesbian, . . . she is still the oldest sister who has the respect of her younger siblings.

At the event, MAPLBN also received an official commendation from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and the booklet’s “family coming out” stories were touchingly reported in Sing Tao, the local Chinese- language newspaper and Channel 26, the Chinese- language cable station. After the ceremony, Margot’s father, James, who was visiting from Malaysia, asked whether such public hon- ors were common. I told him, “Only if the work is very important.” He quietly beamed with pride.31

Next Comes the Baby

After that, the Yapps fully entered the world with their gay and lesbian children and looked forward to a grandchild. Like Ma, who asks Wil at the end of Saving Face, “When are you going to have a baby?” the parents pressed on. Margot’s brother, who is gay, was asked by his mother to be the donor for Koko and Mar- got. It took months for all to agree and years to complete the arrangements, including a move from Asia to America and the purchase of a house with room enough for Margot’s parents to help with the baby. In 2002, in the presence of their parents from Taiwan and Malaysia, Koko and Margot got married. Two years later, after organizing another support group, Baby Buds, to assist Asian American and other lesbians of color to conceive or adopt children, Koko and Margot had a baby girl, Megan. Their house is now filled with children, family, and friends who gather for meetings, advice, support groups, and play dates.

Koko and Margot were not the first Asian American lesbians to marry or have a child. But they were among the first of the post- 1965 Asian immigrant generation— with parents still in Asia— to cross this formidable threshold. Today in the San Francisco Bay Area, fifteen years later, there are about sixty children who have been born or adopted by Asian American LGBTQ families. Many sup- port each other, from sharing tips for making, adopting, or raising children to babysitting, throwing birthday parties, and passing on used furniture, clothes, books, and toys. The joys of these events might never have been imagined or realized without the initiatives of Asian lesbians within and across national bor- ders and the use of powerful teaching tools like films, videos, and a little booklet with which to reach out to families.

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Marriage Equality: Private Struggles Become Public Models of Acceptance

While Asian Americans (alone and in combination with other races) made up a little over 5.6 percent of the US population in 2010,32 Asian American lesbians played a noticeable public role in local, state, and national efforts to win mar- riage equality. First, we were among the named plaintiffs in three state lawsuits challenging same- sex marriage discrimination.33 Second, Asian Americans in California showed a remarkable level of support for same- sex marriage. Draw- ing on alliances within the Asian American community built over the preceding twenty- five years, our political, legal, and community allies took the lead. Paral- leling the discrimination against LGBTQ people with anti- Asian discrimination and antimiscegenation, immigration, and citizenship laws, Asian and Pacific Islanders for LGBT Equality– Southern California (Los Angeles) successfully spearheaded a campaign that garnered an unprecedented coalition of more than sixty Asian American organizations that filed an amicus brief in support of equal marriage rights.34 Asian and Pacific Islanders for LGBT Equality– Northern California (San Francisco), in collaboration with the statewide coalition Let California Ring, ran a series of full- page ads in Asian Week featuring an Asian American lesbian or gay person and a family member.35

In the few months between May and November 2008, when it was legal for same- sex couples to marry in California,36 Asian American LGBTQ couples were well represented among them. Journalist and author Helen Zia and her partner of sixteen years, Lia Shigemura, were married in San Francisco on June 16, 2008, witnessed by Helen’s mother and officiated by San Francisco city attor- ney Dennis Herrera, who had successfully argued for gay marriage before the California State Supreme Court.37 In Oakland, as local celebrities in the cam- paign for equal marriage rights, Koko and Margot were married by Oakland mayor Ron Dellums while their three- year- old daughter, Megan, and Margot’s parents, James and Soon Tze Yapp, witnessed.38 In Southern California, George Takei— who famously played Mr. Sulu on the original TV and movie series Star Trek— beamed as he and his partner of twenty- one years, Brad Altman, were married at the Democracy Forum of the Japanese American National Museum on September 14, 2008.39

Conclusion

While coming out and family acceptance are not automatic or guaranteed for every Asian American LGBTQ person, the old standards of shame and stigma have been challenged in both private and public spaces. Through new cultural practices, such as community organizing and sharing people’s stories of struggle and transformation in person, letter, video, and film, the pathway for a successful

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reconciliation with one’s family is possible. Overall, we no longer feel we have to lead secret lives cloaked in innuendo and far away from the eyes of our families. The transformations of Ma, Wil, their family, and the community in Saving Face are reflections of the actual changes that have taken place in the lives, fami- lies, and communities of Asian American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The new cultural pattern beneath these practices retains the core value of family, yet it demonstrates the respect of the individual as well. Today, whether a whole family or individual members of one’s family overcome the social stigma and cultural beliefs embodied in homophobia or not, the trend toward family acceptance has created enough social space in the community as a whole for an Asian American LGBTQ person to step forward out of the shadows and live a full life.

What propelled Asian American lesbians to persist, resist, accommodate, challenge, and eventually forge a successful pathway to family acceptance of homosexuality and same- sex marriage? Based on my observations, conversa- tions, and experiences in the Asian American LGBTQ community, I believe our push to gain family acceptance was directly connected to our desire to have chil- dren. By the 1990s, assisted reproductive technology and sperm- donor banks were successfully developed and widely used by lesbians as a means for preg- nancy. For the first time, you could have a child on your own! While we, as adults, could and did stay in the closet to our families, we could not and did not want to hide our children. (This is why Desiree and I got married in the first place. When we decided to have children, I said, “We have to get married first!”)40 Gaining family acknowledgment, support, and acceptance of ourselves as a homosexual, bisexual, or transgender person was necessary before children could be brought into the picture.

In 2017, the world is much smaller, linked by organizations, newspapers, books, telephones, internet, television, and movie screens! Asian America has changed. We, as immigrant, transplant, native born, and everything in between, have taken those “given” cultural beliefs, traditions, and identities and reshaped them in the soil of accommodation, adaptation, and reinvention in America. This was certainly the case for gender- and sexual- minority people in the Asian American community, where it is now possible to be gay and Asian too. In recent decades, America has changed, legalizing same- sex marriage and accepting gays in the military, including transgender people. Yet many people in the United States and elsewhere are still deeply divided on the gay question, and the Trump administration is actively undermining and reversing these gains.

The acceptance of homosexuals and the legitimization of same- sex relation- ships through legal marriage is far from settled, though it has been significantly resolved for many Asian American families and their LGBTQ children, relatives, friends, or colleagues. How and when the current political and cultural polariza- tion plays out and resolves— as a reversal or move forward— is not known. Yet

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the honor remains that the Asian American community, led by the courageous private and public struggles of its LGBTQ members and their parents, demon- strated that “in Asian families, all children are welcome.”41 From the example and leadership of Asian American lesbians, it is an inspirational prospect that other marginalized groups can also effect similar transformations in families, communities, ethnic groups, and countries.

Epilogue

On Friday, May 24, 2019, more than 350 LGBTQ couples exercised their new legal rights and exchanged vows at Taipei’s Xinyi District Household Registration Office, as Taiwan became the first place in Asia to recognize same- sex unions. The registrations came exactly one week after Taiwan’s legislature made head- lines worldwide by voting to recognize same- sex marriage. Two years earlier, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court ruled that laws prohibiting marriage between two people of the same sex violated constitutional guarantees of equality and ordered the parliament to amend the civil code within two years to comply with its deci- sion. Since the historic legislative vote, there has been an outpouring of love and acceptance across Taiwan, both by same- sex couples and by their friends and families.42

Notes 1 The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the law barring the federal government from

recognizing same- sex marriages that were legalized by the states, was declared unconstitu- tional by the Supreme Court by a 5– 4 vote on June 26, 2013. On June 26, 2015, by a 5– 4 majority, the Supreme Court declared that same- sex couples have the constitutional right to marry and have their marriages recognized. “Same- Sex Marriage in the United States,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org.

2 I use “Asian American” for people of Asian descent in the United States and “Asian” when broadly referring to the history or culture of Asia or any person, place, or event in Asia. The chapter covers a thirty- year span during which different terms were used at different times in the United States to designate sexual- and gender- minority people. “Pacific Islanders” is used in the name of an organization or a data report if Pacific Islander people are part of its mission or research population. I use “LGBTQ” (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer) as the overall term for this community and “lesbian” for homosexual women, as it was their chosen identifier between 1980 and 2000.

3 Neil Miller, In Search of Gay America: Women and Men in a Time of Change (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1989), 157– 62; Trinity A. Ordona and Desiree Thompson, “A Thousand Cranes,” in Ceremonies of the Heart: Celebrating Lesbian Unions, ed. Becky Butler (Seattle: Seal, 1990), 81– 90; Shulee Ong, Because This Is about Love: A Portrait of Gay and Lesbian Marriage (New York: Filmmakers Library, 1991); Trinity A. Ordona, “A Long Road Ahead,” in Tibok: Heartbeat of the Filipino Lesbian, ed. Anna Leah Sarabia (Manila: Anvil and Circle, 1998), 147– 59.

4 While all racial/ethnic groups show increased support for same- sex marriage, current estimates are Asian/Pacific Islanders 69 percent, Hispanic 60 percent, white 59 percent,

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mixed race 59 percent, and black 48 percent. Daniel Cox, Rachel Lienesch, and Robert P. Jones, “Same Sex Marriage: Who Sees Discrimination? Attitudes on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Race, and Immigration Status: Executive Summary,” in Findings from PRRI’s American Values Atlas, Public Religion Research Institute, June 21, 2017, www.prri.org.

5 Karin Wang, “A Look Back: The Push to Rally Asian American Support for Marriage Equality,” Women’s E- News, June 2016, excerpted from Love Unites Us: Winning the Freedom to Marry in America, ed. Kevin M. Cathcart and Lesblie J. Gabel- Brett (New York: New, 2016).

6 Asian and Pacific Islander Family Pride was founded in 2004 by Belinda Dronkers- Laureta (executive director), John Dronkers- Laureta, Loren Javier, Trinity Ordona, and Julia and Sam Thoron, www.apifamilypride.org. Though Pacific Islanders are part of its program and outreach, this chapter chronicles only Asian American LGBTQ people and their family stories.

7 From the beginning of the epidemic, gay men of color were disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS, and by the time the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program launched in 1990, they accounted for approximately 30 percent of reported cumulative AIDS cases. See “Gay Men and the History of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program,” Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), https://hab.hrsa.gov, accessed December 14, 2017.

8 “Folklore,” Webster’s New World College Dictionary, www.yourdictionary.com, accessed August 28, 2009.

9 Kitty Tsui, personal communication, April 5, 1994. See also Trinity A. Ordona, “Coming Out Together: An Ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women’s and Transgender People’s Movement of San Francisco” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2000), 120– 21; Kitty Tsui, The Words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire (San Francisco: Spinsters Ink, 1983), 12– 13.

10 Mireya Navarro, “A Special Report, Part 3: Gay in America,” San Francisco Examiner, June 6, 1989, 20.

11 Allen White, “Open Forum: Reagan’s AIDS Legacy: Silence Equals Death,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 2004, B- 9.

12 The Wedding Banquet won the Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated as the Best Foreign Language Film in both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. Brokeback Mountain was the most acclaimed film of 2005, winning eighty- five awards and an additional fifty- two nominations from around the world. “The Wedding Banquet,” and “Brokeback Mountain,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/. China Daily quotation, as cited in the Guardian, March 7, 2006, www.theguardian.com.

13 Fire was both an instant box- office success and violently targeted by a Hindu fundamental- ist party for portraying homosexual intimacies. “Fire (1996 film),” Wikipedia, https:// en.wikipedia.org/.

14 Arthur Dong’s films have earned him numerous awards and public- service honors in the LGBTQ and Asian American communities in the United States and Taiwan. See “Arthur Dong,” DeepFocus Productions, www.deepfocusproductions.com.

15 “Saving Face (2004 film),” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/. 16 “Gay in America: 1989,” San Francisco Examiner, June 23– 30, 1989. 17 The initiators were Rafael Chang, Yvette Fang, Trinity Ordona, Nancy Otto, and Pat Souza. 18 PFLAG, founded in 1972 to support LGBTQ people, their families, and allies, is a national

nonprofit organization with more than two hundred thousand members and supporters and more than four hundred chapters in the United States.

19 Ellen and Harold Kameya joined PFLAG in the early 1990s and opened their home to host a support group for Asian American parents, but none came. This is also true of other

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racial- and ethnic- minority people. Ellen and Harold Kameya, personal communication, 1994.

20 API- PFLAG Family Project— formed in 1995 and composed of Julia Thoron (SF- PFLAG president), Sam Thoron (PFLAG National Board member), Cianna Stewart, Daniel Bao from the API Wellness Center, and myself— grew into API Family Pride in 2004.

21 Coming Out, Coming Home, video, dir. Hima B., 44 min., with introductory pamphlets in English, Chinese and Tagalog (San Francisco: API- PFLAG Family Project, 1995).

22 “Pride on Parade,” Hokubei Mainichi, June 29, 1989, no. 12094. 23 “Hokubei’s Family Values Questioned,” and J. K. Yamamoto, “Letters to the Editor: A Reply,”

Hokubei Mainichi Northern California Daily, September 16, 1992, no. 12705, p. 1. 24 Helen Zia, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People (New York:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 227– 51. 25 President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined

marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife,” on September 21, 1996, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act. Hawai‘i voters, circumventing the legal challenge altogether, joined a growing handful of other states that approved a state constitutional ban on same- sex marriage, https://gaymarriage. procon.org.

26 Event flyers, personal file copies. 27 Molly Fumia, Honor Thy Children: One Family’s Journey to Wholeness (Berkeley, CA:

Conari, 1997). The Nakatanis lost their middle son, Greg, to a senseless road rage killing over a parking space. Their eldest and youngest sons, Glen and Guy, died of HIV/AIDS.

28 In 1999, the Nakatanis were honored by the National Education Association with the Ellison S. Onizuka Memorial Award for “their efforts to teach tolerance and acceptance by sharing their experiences raising two homosexual sons and another who had difficulty adjusting to being a racial minority in the US.” Hawaii Herald, August 6, 1999, A- 3.

29 There Is No Name for This: Chinese in America Discuss Sexual Diversity, video, 49 min., dir. and prod. Ming Yuen S. Ma and Cianna Pamintuan Stewart (San Francisco: API Wellness Center, 1997).

30 Family Project of MAPLBN (Mandarin Asian/Pacific Lesbian and Bisexual Network), Beloved Daughter: Family Letter Project, in Chinese and English (San Francisco: self- published, 1999), 35– 36.

31 James Yapp, personal communication, July 18, 1999. 32 “The Asian Population: 2010,” (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2012). 33 Ninia Baehr and Genora Dancel in Baehr v. Miike, 910 P.2d 112 (Haw. 1996); Vegavahini

Subramaniam, Vaijayanthimala Nagarajan, Michelle Esguerra, and Boo Torres De Esguera, Andersen v. King County, 138 P.3d 963 (Wash. 2006); Lancy Woo and Cristy Chung in Woo v. Lockyer (A110451 [Super. Ct. S.F. City & County, No. CPF- 04- 504038]).

34 “Unprecedented Coalition of Over 60 Asian American Organizations File Legal Brief Supporting Equal Marriage Rights in California,” API Equality, http://apiequality.org.

35 Asian Week: The Voice of Asian America 29, nos. 2– 6 (August 29– October 2, 2008); Let California Ring, “Strong Commitments, Strong Families,” Lightbox Collaborative, www. lightboxcollaborative.com.

36 In May 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that the ban on same- sex marriage was unconstitutional on the basis of equal protection. In re Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d 384 (Cal. 2008). From June to November 2008, California allowed an estimated eighteen thousand same- sex couples to legally marry. David Masci and Jesse Merriam, “The Constitutional Dimensions of the Same- Sex Marriage Debate,” Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion &

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Public Life, July 9, 2009, www.pewforum.org. Jesse McKinley, “California Couples Await Gay Marriage Ruling,” New York Times, May 25, 2009, www.nytimes.com.

37 Jesse McKinley, “Hundreds of Same- Sex Couples Wed in California,” New York Times, June 18, 2008, www.nytimes.com. APIENC, “Helen Zia and Lia Shigemura,” YouTube, June 19, 2008, video, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4rPTzxHbIo.

38 Zak Szymanski, “East Bay Couples Celebrate Nuptials,” Bay Area Reporter, June 16, 2008, 1. 39 Michael Schulman, “George Takei Is Still Guiding the Ship,” New York Times, June 13, 2014,

www.nytimes.com. 40 Ordona and Thompson, “A Thousand Cranes,” 82. 41 Motto of API Family Pride. 42 Chris Horton, “After a Long Fight, Taiwan’s Same- Sex Couples Celebrate New Marriages,”

New York Times, May 24, 2019, www.nytimes.com.

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