“Coming Out” Asians in Pacific North
The movie “Trailer: In God’s House,” demonstrates that most Asian cultures view homosexuality as an incomplete development, weakness and painful experience. For example, Asian parents like Ellen and Harold Kameya, both feel sorrow when their daughter identifies herself as a lesbian. As Ellen Kameya states, “One of the difficult things after our daughter came out was for me to sit and watch the baptism because they said the same words … and didn’t follow through and she said it was the church that caused your pain.” Likewise, Harold Kameya voices, “When our daughter came out, my dream of walking her down the aisle was blown apart.” In this sense, many Asian parents expect their children to grow up heterosexually to fit in Asian society. To these parents, watching their children growing up straight and attending their wedding ceremony at church are important expectations. In the same spiritual faith, Oneida Chi shares her cheerless feeling when she came out, “I think it is so important to be able to share about this, but I mean because I have gone through so much pain…God, if you were God, why did you have to make me this way.” Chi expresses her sadness as she sees herself as different from others because she is influenced deeply in Asian cultures. Based on different personal experiences and lifestyles, each individual expresses his/her ideas in a dissimilar way. For instance, Pastor Nobuaki Hanaoka shares his point of view: “I witness a tragedy of a gay person, who is still in a closet.” In contrast, Nancy Nguyen* states: “[W]e do not all live our lives in despair. [M]any of us are well-adjusted, despite being ‘in the closet’.”