Prop 8- The Aftermath

Last week 52% of voters in California voted to pass Prop 8 which bans same-sex marriage in California.

There is an upside to this whole Prop 8 mess.  The upside is that the gay community and our supporters are being galvanized.  People are beginning to understand the importance of gay marriage rights, that this is a fundamental right that should not be denied to us, that it’s also about being treated equally under the law.

A few years ago, there was a lot of ambiguity and apathy about this issue in the gay community.  No more!  People are protesting all over the place and are actively working on the next steps.  Most importantly, there is now a critical understanding of what this struggle means.

If gays and lesbians are granted the right to marry, it will mean that the law and society considers our relationships equal to that of heterosexuals.  Our relationships will be deemed worthy of dignity and respect.  This will have ramifications far beyond just the right to marry.

In my view, there are two avenues the gay community can take to win back this right.  The first is to put forth another initiative in two years or so that would reverse Prop 8.

The other would be to take this issue to the federal courts where it would eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The former strategy is easier to implement and a lot less risky because it’s limited to California.

The latter strategy is higher risk but with the possibility of a greater return.  If the U.S. Supreme Court decided in our favor, that would legalize same sex marriage in all of the U.S. at both the state and federal level, which is the ultimate goal.  Ten years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the highly discriminatory Amendment 2 in Colorado.

If they rule against us however, that would set back this movement many, many years.

Presently, the U.S. Supreme Court is fairly conservative.  Even though Obama will soon be President and will have the opportunity to appoint new justices, the justices who may retire soon are liberals.

If I had to choose, I’d say go for the less risky route of trying to reverse Prop 8 just in California and slowly work to educate the public regarding same sex marriage.

Public opinion does affect the way justices rule on social issues.  Getting the support and understanding of the American public before taking this to the U.S. Supreme Court is a far more prudent course of action.

Yellow Peril Hysteria Strikes the LPGA

Things were fine and dandy for the Ladies Professional Golf Association (the “LPGA”) when Se Ri Park was the only Korean woman golfer winning world class golf tournaments 10 years ago. It made them look tolerant, embracing of diversity, international. Now the LPGA counts 45 South Korean golfers among their ranks and suddenly that’s become a problem.

Why? Because the South Koreans, by far the largest and most successful international contingent of women golfers, are not up to snuff when it comes to schmoozing American style. They don’t present themselves well to the media, they can’t hobnob with corporate sponsors and most of all they don’t speak English well enough. Apparently, that’s a huge problem for the LPGA which is heavily dependent on the support of its sponsors.

The LPGA unleashed a torrent of negative publicity with their decision last week to require English language proficiency from their members at the risk of suspension. The majority of articles and commentary on the internet has condemned the policy as being racist, discriminatory, unfair, and just plain un-American.

I myself felt my heart sink when I heard about this proposed policy. It seems completely wrong and unfair especially when you consider the ability to speak English is so far removed from being able to play golf well. Come on, you don’t even TALK when you’re playing golf.

But even assuming the LPGA’s best intentions “to assist in giving them the best opportunity to make a living and maximize their earnings opportunities and those of the LPGA” (per LPGA website- http://www.lpga.com/content_1.aspx?pid=17137&mid=4), the LPGA’s policy really reflects massive cultural insensitivity and ignorance. Does the LPGA realize just how difficult it might be for these Korean golfers to learn the English language and present themselves to western audiences?

English is a very tough language for Koreans and try as they might, some players may never get good enough to give victory speeches in English or “schmooze” with the golfarrazzi. The LPGA should have read my earlier post “A Strange and Tortured Relationship: Koreans and the English Language”. Lol.

It also makes me sad to think that some aspiring Korean or other international female golfer may be discouraged from even trying to enter the sport because they feel their English may never be good enough. Playing world class golf is tough enough. International players shouldn’t be forced to meet this extra requirement.

Also, I can’t help but see a great deal of nativistic and Anglocentric sentiments and biases in the LPGA’s policy. With too many Asians affecting their bottom line, they reacted in tired, old yellow hysteria ways. Too many Asians are invading their sport so they have to come up with ways to assimilate them into white Western ways, if not exclude them.

I understand that money talks and a lot of the world is based on Western money but did the LPGA forget that some of their largest sponsors are Korean companies like Samsung and Hi-Mart (Korea’s version of Best Buy) and that an ever growing percentage of their audience is Asian and international in general?

Thank goodness the Asian American legal community is responding to this situation in full force, with several organizations and politicians responding with harsh letters of reprimand and the threat of lawsuits and legislation. If the LPGA doesn’t voluntarily change their misguided and racist, Jemma Crow English language policy, you can be damn sure, they’re gonna get sued.

A Strangely Inverted Community- Gay Asian Men in America

Something happened when I came out and it’s thrown my gay experience off.  It’s the phenomenon of race.

I came out in the late 1980s and what I discoverered pretty immediately was that the gay community consisted mostly of gay white males.  The few gay Asians that existed were mostly attracted to white men.

While the number of gay Asians has increased dramatically, it still remains true that a disproportionate number of them are attracted mainly to white men and not to other Asian men.  This phenomenon is somewhat true among Latino and black gay men but doesn’t seem as prevalant with these two groups.

My experience around this has been so negative that it’s somehow gotten into my head that whenever I see a gay Asian male, I assume he’s mainly attracted to white men so I don’t even attempt to “go for it”.  As a gay Asian male who is attracted primarily to Asian men, this puts me in a nasty predicament.

It’s sad that gay Asian men who are naturally attracted to other gay Asian men find themselves in a minority within a minority within a minority.  Gay white men don’t have to deal with this dilemma.

It’s tempting to get super angry and blame others- white-centric gay Asian men, white men, the U.S.  I have and do “rage against the system” at times.

Instead, I’m better off finding other gay Asian men who are more my persuasion, even though it takes a little more effort.

Thank goodness, in Asia, potato-queenism is the exception and most gay Asians in Asia prefer to date other Asian men.  It’s as natural for them as breathing.  At least I have that as a touchstone.

At the same time, I don’t want to get too hung up on this issue because some of my dating dilemmas have nothing to do with this strange racial predicament.

Full Empowerment

What would it look like if Asians in the United States were fully empowered and self-actualized?

We would see Asians excelling in every arena of American life including politics, sports, the arts, literature, media, the movies, etc. We’re not doing too shabby in the areas of education, the professions and business and we’re making slow progress in the rest. Thanks to our 1st generation parents, we have a somewhat firm economic base and more and more of us are moving into non-traditional fields.

Fortunately, many areas of American life are open to us and it’s mainly up to us to make our mark. If we experience discrimination and barriers in the establishment (which still exist), it’s up to us to overcome them. It we can’t overcome them, we need to make the system fairer. If that doesn’t work, we need to strike out on our own and create our own companies, movies, sports teams, etc. We don’t have to employ these strategies in the order I just mentioned.

In doing this, I hope we don’t lose our traditional cultural identities completely and instead leave a little “Asian imprint” on American culture. Many of us are doing this in the fields we are entering into.

Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, there is still a sore lack of Asians in media and culture. That’s slowly changing but it seems most people we see on TV, the movies and in magazines are white. Hopefully, more and more Asians will be entering the entertainment and media fields and will change the shape of American pop culture. I hope Asians don’t just work behind the scenes constantly creating only western cultural products that only star white people and contain western themes for a white audience.

Someday, it won’t be such a novelty to see Asians in the media. Someday, no one will think twice to see an Asian action hero or lead, male or female. You’ll see a variety of Asians and other people of color in all kinds of roles.

Someday, we Asians will not have to walk into any situation and think twice about whether their Asianness will be an issue. We simply won’t have any more discrimination against Asians or other people of color. Someday. Hopefully soon.

My Beef with Stanford University circa 1986

What was my beef with Stanford University when I entered as a freshman in 1986?  It was just so white.

I felt deceived.  The glossy freshman book had attractive pictures of people of color- Asians, Latinos, Blacks- who were engaged in a variety of activities and who seemed to be a major part of campus life.

The reality I experienced was a white majority and a great deal of culture shock.  My freshman dorm revolved around football and all the rituals related to it- the drinking, the tailgating, the partying, the whoop, whoop whooping.  Being from a squeaky clean Asian-majority high school that emphasized academics and de-empasized sports and partying, this environment was quite alien to me.

The white kids at Stanford seemed spoiled and privileged.  They all seemed to be from pampered backgrounds where they didn’t know hardship and struggle like the minority kids.  People in my dorm always complained about the dorm food not being tasty, but they didn’t realize what a privilege it was just to eat 3 meals a day.  Kids from immigrant and under-privileged backgrounds know the value of any meal- bland tasting or not.

I remember one white female student complaining about not having laminated student ID cards.  Stanford student ID cards were just made out of paper and got easily mangled in one’s wallet I guess.  That was her BURNING issue.  Come on!  The black students were trying to get white businesses out of South Africa to defeat apartheid and the Latino students were organizing boycotts against grapes to prevent Latino farm workers from being poisoned by pesticides.  Ridiculous!

Hopefully, Stanford’s changed since then but this was my reality as I faced it in 1986.