discussion 5 - Assignment Essays

requirements in doc.

Disscusion 5

Watch video: coming out coming home 2

(1) Discuss what stuck out to you the most about how gay and lesbian Asian Americans navigated their ethnic and sexual identities in the context of their immigrant families, referring to the two texts and the video this week.

(300 words)

(2) provide a thoughtful response to at least one (1) of your classmates.

(150 words)

(3) (300 words)

First: In Anthony Ocampo’s chapter, Lessons in Manhood and Morality, gay Filipino men shared significant family memories and interactions that shaped both their ethnic and sexual identities. Are there significant memories or interactions between you and your parents growing up that influenced your ethnic, sexual, and gender identities?

Then: Trinity Ordona discussed new cultural patterns and practices in Asian American communities that have shifted LGBTQ people from marginalization to inclusion within their families. What other cultural patterns and practices have you seen in your own communities and families that has moved the needle towards inclusion?

Reading

· “Lessons in Manhood and Morality” (Page 15-35) in Brown & Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons by Anthony Ocampo (2022)

· “Opening the Path to Marriage Equality: Asian American Lesbians Reach Out to their Families and Communities” by Trinity Ordona (2020) in Our Voices Our Histories Asian American and Pacific Islander Women by Hune and Omura

image1

Ben Cabangun

321

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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322 | Trinity A. Ordona

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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Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 323

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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324 | Trinity A. Ordona

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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Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 325

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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326 | Trinity A. Ordona

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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Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 327

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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328 | Trinity A. Ordona

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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Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 329

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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Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 331

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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332 | Trinity A. Ordona

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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Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 333

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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334 | Trinity A. Ordona

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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https://en.wikipedia.org

Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 335

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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Home

https://hab.hrsa.gov

http://www.yourdictionary.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/

http://www.theguardian.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/

Home

https://en.wikipedia.org/

336 | Trinity A. Ordona

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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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act

https://gaymarriage.procon.org

http://apiequality.org

Home

Opening the Path to Marriage Equality | 337

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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http://www.pewforum.org

http://www.nytimes.com

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