Asian Group Readying Message to Urge
Their Culture into LGBT Reconciliation

By Bruce Pettit

Alameda -- August 5, 2005

Some Bay Area Asians and Pacific Islanders -- recognizing the religious and cultural challenges faced by many API lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons and their families -- intend to launch a working group in September to help build acceptance and support for LGBTs in their faith/religious communities.

Four groups organized an event at Buena Vista UMC in Alameda on July 23 to set the tone. Relating experiences were a pastor with a lesbian daughter, a lesbian once questioning whether faith was possible for her, parents alienated from organized religion, and the single Asian UMC in the nation that is reconciling -- Pine in San Francisco.

Highlighting both afternoon and evening gatherings were Al and Jane Nakatani, alienated from Catholicism. Al Nakatani urged: "Those of you thinking about becoming reconciling [LGBT welcoming & affirming], take off the thinking cap and just do it -- because our children need it."

API (Asian/Pacific Islander) Family Pride, based in the East Bay, is largely secular, modeled after PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) but addressing particular API norms. The other three organizations behind the new venture are religious oriented -- PANA (Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion), GRACE (Gay Asian Christians & Allies), and CLGS (Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) based at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in Berkeley.

API Family Pride was planning its second annual banquet to publicly honor families who accept and respect their LGBT family members. The leaders of all four groups recognizing a need to address the religious component of prejudice, joined together to create an afternoon forum preceding the banquet that included personal stories about the struggles of Christian Asian American LGBTs and their families. Buena Vista UMC was chosen as a "safe" religious venue. PANA's program director, the Rev. Debbie Lee of the United Church of Christ, said in introducing the day's presentations: "These issues are often talked about, but outside our religious communities."

'Macho' and Gay Pride Clash

The Nakatanis, formerly of San Jose and now living in Maui, have packaged their story into a documentary, Honor Thy Children, and tell it around the nation. Jane said she was homophobic before two of their three sons came out to them as gay. The straight son, Greg, was murdered in 1986 at the age of 23 over what Al called macho pride. Glenn and Guy both died of AIDS, in 1990 and 1994, respectively, at ages 29 and 26.

Al Nakatani explained that he had taught his son Greg to stand up for his rights -- to the point of physically fighting. That he had not taught Greg to back away in trivial situations -- like a minor car accident -- led to his shooting by two men. Al said he long considered the death of Greg to be divine punishment for not fully honoring his gay sons. Greg was to be Al's legacy. With Greg's death -- and the realization that Glenn and Guy would die also -- Al said he had to accept that he would have no children, and no biological legacy. He became active, with Guy, in HIV education -- when Guy implored, "When I can no longer do this, you have to do it."

Pine UMC showed Honor Thy Children on July 17, and the Nakatanis spoke to the congregation on July 24. Pine became a reconciling congregation in 1993. Long-time member Toyoko Doi told the Buena Vista group of about 60: "We didn't think it was a big deal." The Rev. Nobu Hanaoka, a former Pine pastor, had laid the groundwork a few years earlier.

But nearly everyone else in the audience did think it was a big deal. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force was so amazed that there was a gay-friendly Asian church anywhere that it recently called Pine's current pastor, John Oda, for strategic advice. Pine will launch an LGBT small group ministry for API Christians in September as it starts also a new Saturday afternoon contemporary service.

Rev. Hanaoka, now the pastor at Bethany UMC in San Francisco, related that he had counseled families to be acceptive of LGBT children long before his daughter came out to him as a lesbian in 1998. His daughter knew that history, but wondered whether having the situation in their own family would be different. It wasn't. Hanaoka said his daughter changed dramatically from being "quiet and reserved to being confident and affectionate." He said Asian families frequently do reject their LGBT children. One family rejected a son who later qualified as an Olympic wrestler, then eventually died of AIDS. But even if rejection is not outright, often, Hanaoka said, there is this attitude: "Be quiet about it -- it's embarrassing to our family."

Oneida Chi, a current parishioner of Hanaoka's at Bethany, spoke about the early difficulty in being "gay, Asian, and Christian." Even though she felt rejected by the Church, she could never reject God, as other LGBT Asian friends had. She finally did reconcile the three criteria of her personality when she met a woman in London who was partnered with a woman pastor. Chi has since found GRACE, an ecumenical faith-sharing group, and has not been alone since.

'One Battle He Did Not Have to Fight'

Belinda and John Dronkers-Laureta are members of First UMC of Fremont. Belinda said it took years before she could even discuss with family and friends that her second son is gay. "Religion made it hard for me." But she brought herself to start an East Bay PFLAG in 1996 and API Family Pride in 1998. John took pride in his son never being religious: "That was one battle he did not have to fight."

Ellen Kameya, a former Presbyterian now with a UCC congregation, went from being homophobic to a gay-rights activist after her daughter came out. "I've never heard of Asians who are gay. That was my thought in 1988. Valerie interpreted things [in sermons] in ways we who are heterosexual did not hear."

The Rev. Jeffrey Kuan, a PSR professor, told of growing up in Malaysia and the "theological journey" he had to undertake to turn around. As late as 1987 he said he was associated with the evangelical Good News organization, which has been instrumental in retaining the United Methodist policy of biblical "incompatibility" with homosexuality. But after researching the context of three Old Testament passages and three New Testament passages purportedly against homosexuality, he now contends there is no such incompatible message there.

For a banquet that evening of July 23, the crowd swelled to over 100, with parents and sons and daughters standing to proclaim their pride in each other, and in being family.

Al Nakatani has no church now, hoping to have an equal chance to influence all denominations with his family's story. But he insisted, "If I could go back 25 years, this is what I would look for in a church: Either tell me you are reconciling, or tell me you are not reconciling."

Michael Yoshii, pastor of the historically Japanese American Buena Vista UMC, said that his church, while not officially "reconciling," became heavily involved in LGBT rights in the 1990s after a mayor refused to sign a Gay Pride proclamation. Rev. Yoshii's church became practically a headquarters for burgeoning LBGT rights in Alameda, with only him and one other pastor in that city in support. Buena Vista UMC is now considering the "reconciling" label, he said.

Bruce Pettit is a member of the California-Nevada Conference Communications Commission. Originally posted on the website of Golden Gate District of the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church.