Week 8 - Tristan Kwik - A03

This week, I read the article Teaching Justice and Living Peace: Body, Sexuality, and Religious Education in Asian-American Communities written by Boyung Lee. In the first part of the article, Lee discusses the topic of sexuality within Asian-American communities. He describes it as a “null curriculum,” meaning that sexuality is a topic that is not talked about within Asian-American communities. In most Asian-American communities, it’s kept under wraps, especially by parents. Parents that find out their child is not heterosexual typically try to keep the news within their family and avoid bringing it up to extended family and others. In the case studies described in the articles, those that identify as homosexual are silenced by others, such as parents or the media. Because sexuality is such a taboo within the Asian-American community, they pretend that it does not exist at all. For instance, in the first case study, the father, who was a minister, refused to acknowledge the fact that his own son was gay. Instead, he made his son keep it a secret within their immediate family and pretend like the whole thing never even happened.

I find the second case study to be pretty interesting, as I have met many people who think the same way that the mother in the case does. The mother claims that she’ll always love her daughter even though she’s lesbian, but “she’ll always be unable to live a normal life and that she’ll always be viewed as an oddity in our society” (Lee 405). I think that the mother’s statement is conflicting in a sense because even though she says she loves her daughter, she can’t accept the fact that she’s lesbian because she lives in a world where straight people are considered normal. By already believing in this ideology, she ostracizes her own daughter and “dream[s] of the day when [her] loving daughter will change” (Lee 406).

Question: How can people, especially parents, ignore their children’s sexual identity, yet still claim to “love their child no matter what?”

References

Lee, B.  (2006.) Teaching Justice and Living Peace: Body, Sexuality, and Religious Education in Asian-American Communities.  Religious Education 101-3, 402-419.

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