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July 2 - 9, 1998

A Growing Show of Pride

Record Asian American presence at parade reflects a growing acceptance

BY STACY LAVILLA

About 500 Asians and Asian Americans--the largest contingent ever--proudly celebrated their gay identity with hundreds of other marchers this Sunday in San Francisco's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Parade.

Cookie Wong, this year's Miss Gapa, greets some of the 200,000 onlookers.

This year's parade, which drew some 200,000 onlookers of all races, capped off a weekend of events dedicated to gay pride, including many for gay Asian Americans.

On Saturday, many Asian Americans participated in the first-ever U.S. Chinese Tongzhi Conference, in which Bay Area residents and visitors from China convened for a three-day conference to discuss issues facing gay Asians in America and China.

Despite record-breaking numbers, Sunday's presence of gay Asian Americans was not as novel as in years past. Asian Americans said the parade served more to reinforce their presence than to seek acceptance within the larger gay community.

Though that acceptance may have already been achieved on one front, gay Asian Americans are still seeking acceptance from a much more difficult segment--their own ethnic communities.

"We could use more support and understanding from the Asian American community; that need is really, really frustrating sometimes," said Alex Louie, co-chair of Gay Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA). "We're not understood or accepted."

The national organization, founded to empower and further the interests of gays and lesbians of Asian descent, estimates that 1 in 10 Americans in the United States--including Asian Americans--is gay.

GAPA, which marched alongside an oversized birthday cake float marking its 10th anniversary, brought in the largest number of Asian American participants with nearly 200 of its members marching, despite a string of technical difficulties that left many participants dancing in the absence of music.

PHOTOS BY NICK ITO
Left: The parade brought contingents representing a myriad of facets within the queer community, including Chameleon, a transgender group for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Right: Wearing a rainbow shirt, Mayor Willie Brown joined the fun

To gain acceptance within Asian American communities, GAPA is taking a lower-key approach, including participation in cultural parades, and working within and through their own families.

Some five years ago, GAPA began participating in the annual Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco Chinatown. "It really was a groundbreaking event for GAPA and our API community," Co-Chair Eric Herbas said.

"In the Chinese community, they're very conservative, and it's still taboo to talk about it. When we were invited four years ago, it was a risk for [GAPA] ... Were we going to be lynched, were they going to throw bottles or eggs? But it turned out well."

However, he said, onlookers are often not as enthusiastic as those at pride parades.

"That is still always a challenge for us because at certain points while you're marching up the street, people are completely silent, you get absolutely nothing," he said. "They respect us, but they don't fully support us."

Herbas said the organization itself will continue to work on gaining recognition, if not acceptance, by Asian Americans.

"GAPA started from the gay point of view, and we're big in the gay community," Herbas said. "But in terms of the Asian community, there is a very limited audience right now. So I think one of the directions is to become ethnic and culturally aware.

"We're heading more away from being gay and more towards the Asian culture."

The Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Network, a national organization, takes a different tack. The group, which has nearly 2,000 members, is preparing for its second annual conference to be held in Los Angeles this weekend.

"We approach things differently than the boys," said Pauline Guillermo, an interim board member. "We're more culturally focused."

Guillermo said family participation is key. "The Asian women in general are very close to our parents, very tight into our culture, so when we try to be visible within our culture we do it more on a personal one-to-one basis, starting with our parents and our grandparents, we don't need to be visible in the larger gay community per se," she explained. "Our importance and focus is that it is always with the Asian American general population that we want to make sure that we have visibility there. Only with ties to the culture can we move forward into the mainstream."

The Asian Pacific Islander, an offshoot of the national group Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (API-PFLAG) provides a support network and educates Asian American families and friends about gay issues and being gay.

When Vince Crisostomo told his parents he was gay and HIV-positive 10 years ago, his mother, in particular, was far from accepting of his lifestyle.

"My mother's response was, 'Oh, that means you have AIDS' then she screamed, and then she threw up," said Crisostomo, who lives in San Francisco. "Her words were then, 'Well, maybe I'll get cancer, that will be my punishment for having a gay son.' "

His family disowned him, and he lost contact with them for two years before they reconciled. Crisostomo says that had an organization like API-PFLAG been there for him when he came out, his situation may have been different.

"A lot of parents would be more accepting of sons and daughters if they had more support," Crisostomo said. "So parents can understand what they're dealing with and understand that other parents have gone through that."

Still, the fledgling API-PFLAG consists only of eight to 10 families, which meet on a quarterly basis. Unlike other groups, the meetings don't consist primarily of openly shared, private revelations. Instead, the group holds social gatherings (its annual picnic is in August) where families can gather socially and warm up to one another before discussing such issues.

PHOTO BY JOANNA JHANDA

Marchers from a Filipino American group celebrate.

The group, which recently produced an English-language video featuring Asian American families, is also helping to create culturally sensitive educational material for gays and their families. API-PFLAG members hope to eventually distribute its video in multiple languages and dialects.

API-PFLAG member Daniel Bao, whose mother also belongs to the group, explained: "The basic gist is to have videos in multiple Asian languages for parents and then basically the hope is that kids will come out with parents proactively and then watch the video with parents and answer lots of common questions like, 'Are you the only one? Is it my fault? Is it the United States?'

"Then if they wanted to speak with another parent, whose child has already came out, we'd have parents to speak to them in their respective languages."

The group also plans to start a workshop this month to train parents in public speaking, and it is producing a handbook discussing how a gay child might come out to his or her parents, with particular consideration to the close bond that often exists within the immediate and extended family.

"That extended family and family and individuals in the family are much more integrally woven even as we grow older," said Steve Lew, who founded the GAPA Community HIV project, now known as the API Wellness Center. "Whereas in other communities, once you reach college age, you're an adult and ready to go into adult life.

"We talk about how to come out in a way that maintains ourselves as a part of our families, and however that relates to extended family also."

Lew and his brother Brian came out to their parents together. Though both parents are accepting and have since joined API-PFLAG, they explain that the tremendous amount of shame surrounding homosexuality kept them from telling their own parents about it.

"For parents of Asian descent, there are a lot of factors that make it hard for parents to be accepting," said Richard Lew, Steve and Brian's father. "It is unusually difficult for Asian families because of the heavy stigma and sense of shame.

"When they first came out to us, there was a lot of insecurity, particularly on my part because of my elderly parents," Lew said. "How do you explain to your 90-year-old father that his grandchildren are gay? I don't even know how to translate that into Chinese."

Lew and his wife hope that by sharing their experience, they can ease other parents' pain and anxiety, and prevent the unnecessary breakup of families.

"I want to be as helpful as I can to other parents who are in similar situations and to assist them in understanding and realizing that just because your children are gay, it doesn't change your relationship with them," Lew emphasized.

"If you alienate yourself from them because of this, there is a tremendous loss that is unnecessary."

As difficult as family relationships can be, that is only one challenge facing gay Asian American activists. Another is how to unite with gay immigrants and refugees, many of whom have arrived within just the past few years.

One of GAPA's biggest obstacles toward unity has been the language barrier.

"Immigrants do have different issues at the cultural level, and the most important thing is language," Herbas said. "For a lot of them, it is very important to exercise and practice their language ... while we do have a lot of Vietnamese members in GAPA, now those members, through the Gay Vietnamese Association, can speak their own language if they want, and read a newsletter in their own language, where with GAPA they couldn't do that."

"One of our biggest challenges is to also unite this community and bring everyone together," Herbas said.

Within just the past three years, organizations for gays of specific ethnicities have sprung up, including Lavender Dragon Society, targeting the Chinese immigrant population; the Gay Vietnamese Association; and the Malaysian Club--all participants in Sunday's parade.

The Gay Vietnamese Association began three years ago as a 10-man organization in Southern California to unite the gay Vietnamese community and to bring greater understanding about gay issues to Vietnamese, Vietnamese Americans and other Asian Americans. The group began a Northern California chapter last year and now boasts a membership of 250 members.

The organization is focused not only on America--it also seeks to improve the social conditions for gay and straight Vietnamese in Vietnam.

"The foundation of the group works on gay issues. However, to grow as a group and as a people you need to look at the environment, the community, and the world, not just gay issues," said Co-Chair Thanh Do, who stresses that the organization does recognize the need to work cooperatively with other gay Asian American groups.

The group is trying to start a center to raise funds for various Vietnamese causes overseas, including helping Amerasian children abandoned by their families in Vietnam.

"We're in the process of setting up a [California] center to help that group, especially in Vietnam, where there is a lot of hate toward them," Do said. "Children are being left in temples and in the woods, because they're Amerasian."

Still, Do said the work and outreach the group does on the home front continues to be the cornerstone of its efforts.

"What keeps me going is watching, how when you do the initial outreach in clubs, in streets, at straight functions, that when you do that, you have people write or call you saying that they're afraid that if they come out people will physically abuse them, or their families will throw them out ... But to watch people grow from that point of shame and immobility, to a feeling of pride, that keeps us going."

Tongzhi Gathering in S.F.

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