Marriage Support Advances in Asian Communities

Timothy Kincaid

June 19th, 2009

From Reuters

Lost in the 2009 election wreckage for gays was the marriage campaign’s relative success in Asian communities, which have swung toward support of same-sex marriage at a faster rate than the rest of California and have become a model for other groups.

Asian Americans have been building grass-roots support in Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Filipinotown for four years. Gays, lesbians and straight allies have talked about the often-taboo topic of homosexuality, set up booths at festivals, harangued non-English language media to change coverage and lobbied elected officials for support.

How did that work for them?

polls of Asians by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center showed a 36 point margin of victory for the ban in 2000, falling to 6 points in 2008. The decline in support [for banning gay marriage] was clearly faster than in the state overall, the center said.

Perhaps there are lessons to be learned.

Vancity

June 19th, 2009

“Ari Gutierrez, a leader of the new Latino Equality Alliance, has also been watching the way Asians organized. One big lesson is the success of connecting the issue to family members and individuals and their stories rather than dealing in abstracts.”

Yes.

Emily K

June 20th, 2009

Here in Philly there is always an Asian-American booth addressing the “T” in LGBT. There are other culture-specific booths as well. This way people learn that gayness transcends everything, and that it is not in and of itself a “lifestyle” that belongs only to one type of human being.

----

June 20th, 2009

Homosexuality used to be pretty common and accepted in East Asia. It wasn’t until Western contact when it began to be ostracised and condemned. Christian missionaries, communism, and power-hungry wingnuts like Rev. Moon are to thank for it. Thankfully, many asians belong to religions that don’t tell them to take stances on political issues (like Buddhism) and are more socially liberal than their Abrahamic counterparts.

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