A note on President Barack Obama’s historic statement this week affirming his support of marriage equality from long-time Amerasia Journal editor Russell C. Leong:
When President Obama told ABC’s Robin Roberts, “I’ve just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” my mind flashed back to the 2006 special issue Amerasia Journal did on the marriage equality debate.
In this issue, edited by Amy Sueyoshi and myself, we published an article by famed editor and writer Helen Zia. In the 1990s, she found herself in Missoula, Montana, working on a story about white supremacists. She arrived in time for the Montana’s first gay pride parade.
“I expected the event to be the high point in an otherwise somber trip,” said Zia. “I wanted to go, to be part of it and show my
support.” Instead, she found herself to be the only person of color as far as she could tell. The crowd gave her wide berth, and Zia walked the whole march as if enclosed in a bubble. She considered raising a banner proclaiming, “I may be Asian but I’m a lesbian, too!”
Zia’s account of her experience in “Where the Queer Zone Meets the Asian Zone: Marriage Equality and Other Intersections” is part of a special issue which brings together for the first time the views of Asian Americans on the same-sex marriage debate, six years before President Obama voiced his support of it.
Today, Zia acknowledges that people have become more accepting, thanks to the work of generations of gay and lesbian and Asian activists. Part of it may be due to people like Zia, who have been willing to push through the barriers and speak on these issues. For that change in attitude, Zia credits the likes of Kevin Chang in Hawaii and Doris Ling Cohan in California, judges who ruled that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and discriminatory. Asian Americans like Stuart Gaffney with his partner John Lewis, and spouses Jennifer Lin and Jeannie Fong were part of the Marriage Equality Bus that brought the issue of same-sex marriage to Wal-Mart parking lots across the country. Asian Americans were the chief plaintiffs in the first lawsuits filed challenging state bans on same-sex marriage.
According to statistics from the UCLA Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation, Law and Public Policy, almost 40,000 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders identify themselves as living with a same-sex partner. Furthermore, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders comprise 3 percent of individuals in same sex couples in the United States, with California, Hawaii and New York hosting the greatest populations.
We support President Obama for speaking out.
Russell C. Leong
Senior International Editor
Ordering information for “Asian Americans in the Marriage and Equality Debate” below the fold…
The special issue of Amerasia Journal‘s “Asian Americans in the Marriage and Equality Debate” can be ordered directly through the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press and is part of our special promotion for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. For the month of May, all back issues of Amerasia Journal are 50% off; each copy is $7.50 plus applicable sales tax for California residents and shipping & handling.
To order, contact the AASC Press Office by phone 310-825-2968 or via email at aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu.
Amerasia on Facebook!