API Equality Los Angeles

Highlights From Legal Brief Of 63 Asian American Groups Urging An End To Exclusion Of Same-Sex Couples From Marriage

Filed in the California Supreme Court, September 26, 2007 In the California Marriage Cases

The California Marriage Cases are historic lawsuits urging the California courts to end the exclusion of loving committed same-sex couples from marriage. The same-sex couples and their supporters seek the Court to hold that the state's current law denying lesbian and gay persons the freedom to marry violates our Constitution's guarantee of equality. Over 60 Asian American organizations filed the amicus brief in the California Supreme Court, supporting basic fairness for same-sex couples and their families.

ORGANIZATIONS FILING THE BRIEF

  • API Equality
  • API Equality-LA
  • API Equality-SF
  • Asian American Bar Association of the Greater Bay Area
  • Asian American Institute
  • Asian American Justice Center
  • Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund
  • Asian American Psychological Association
  • Asian American Queer Women Activists
  • Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum
  • Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian, Bisexual Women and Transgender Network
  • Asian and Pacific Islander Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
  • Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice
  • Asian Law Alliance
  • Asian Law Caucus
  • Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team
  • Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Los Angeles County
  • Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance-Alameda
  • Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance-Los Angeles 
  • Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California
  • Asian Pacific Americans for Progress-Los Angeles
  • Asian Pacific Bar Association of Silicon Valley
  • Asian Pacific Islander Family Pride
  • Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach
  • Asian Pacific Islander Pride Council
  • Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center
  • Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council
  • Asian Pacific Women's Center
  • Asian Women's Shelter
  • Asian/Pacific Bar of California
  • Center for the Pacific Asian Family
  • Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA)
  • Chinese Progressive Association
  • Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty
  • Filipinos for Affirmative Action
  • Gay Asian Pacific Alliance
  • Gay Asian Pacific Support Network
  • Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific Asian North American Religion (PANA Institute)
  • Japanese American Bar Association
  • Japanese American Citizens League
  • Khmer Girls in Action
  • The Korean American Bar Association of Southern California
  • Korean Community Center of the East Bay
  • Korean Resource Center
  • Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance
  • My Sister's House
  • National Asian Pacific American Bar Association 
  • National Asian Pacific American Law Student Association
  • National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum
  • National Korean American Service & Education Consortium
  • Orange County Asian & Pacific Islander Community Alliance
  • Pan Asian Lawyers of San Diego
  • Philippine American Bar Association 
  • Satrang
  • South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow 
  • South Asian Bar Association of Northern California 
  • South Asian Bar Association of San Diego
  • South Asian Bar Association of Southern California
  • South Asian Network
  • Southeast Asia Resource Action Center 
  • Southeast Asian Community Alliance
  • Southern California Chinese Lawyers Associations
  • Vietnamese American Bar Association of Northern California 

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BRIEF

Marriage Exclusions Historically Harmed Asian American Communities

Asian Americans in this country are intimately familiar with the harms that marriage discrimination inflicts upon individuals, families and communities. … [S]ince the beginning of Asian immigration to the United States and for much of the history of California, Asian American populations were denied the equal ability to marry. This denial was an integral part of broader legal and social policies that undermined the existence and participation of Asian Americans in this society. Laws restricting the ability of Asian Americans to marry were closely connected to other government efforts to keep Asian communities separate and excluded from American society generally.

Chinese Americans

Marriage restrictions, and related barriers to the formation of families, prevented the development of stable and growing Chinese American communities in the United States, resulting instead in pockets of Chinese Americans who were isolated socially, politically, and economically. [These barriers to the formation of families had a very destructive effect on the ability of the Chinese American population to grow and to succeed in the early 20th century.]

Japanese Americans

Laws against interracial marriage and other restrictions had the effect of fostering segregated Japanese American communities that were unable to integrate more broadly into society. This social isolation and relative lack of integration created a vulnerability that made possible the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Filipino Americans

Filipino Americans were the object of governmental efforts to limit their ability to immigrate to the United States and to marry and form families, which in turn impeded their ability to integrate fully into society. [After an appellate court ruled that California's statute prohibiting interracial couples from marrying did not apply to Filipinos, the Legislature specifically amended the law to ensure that Filipinos could not marry whites.]

South Asians

The experience of South Asian communities illustrates how laws restricting marriage can transform a community and its ethnic identity.

Parallels Between Historical Discrimination against Asian American Families and the Exclusion of Same-Sex Couples from Marriage

Similar to Asian Americans historically, same-sex couples today are denied the opportunity to participate in marriage an institution that has been recognized as the most effective means of solidifying commitment, achieving security as a family unit, and accordingly being integrated into society.

Lesbian and gay couples have the same desire as heterosexual couples to solemnize a life-bond [through marriage] and to have their relatives and friends recognize and celebrate the extended family networks that support a married couple.

Although the historical contexts differ, there are important parallels between today's exclusion of lesbian and gay couples from marriage and the historical restriction of Asian Americans' ability to marry. Similar to the stereotypes that Asians faced upon their arrival (many of which persist to this day), lesbians and gay men currently deal with stereotypical bias and stigma, social and economic discrimination and exclusion, and even violence. Moreover, both forms of marriage discrimination place a badge of inferiority on a minority group vis-à-vis the majority population, denying the ability to form an enduring and legally secure bond that can be the basis for building a family.

Comments of Asian American Historian and Journalist Helen Zia and Her Family

Helen Zia and her life partner Lia Shigemura were married at San Francisco City Hall in February 2004, but the Court invalidated their marriage and the marriages of thousands of other same-sex couples. Helen and Lia now seek the freedom to marry and are participants in the California Marriage Cases.

Helen:

"To both of our families, my Chinese American family and Lia's Japanese American family, the bonds of family are critically important. . . . Marriage . . . is a bonding of two families, the family of each person in the couple. . . . My mother's inability to say that we are married prevents her from sharing with many of her friends and colleagues the pride and joy and sense of connection that she would have if our union were recognized as a marriage by society."

When Helen and Lia married briefly in February 2004:

"Love and affirmation poured forth from our families and friends. . . . My 15-year old niece has only ever known us as being together. Yet, when we told her we had married, she said to Lia: 'Now you're really my auntie.' . . . "

Helen's mother, Beilin Woo Zia:

"Marriage and family are extremely important in Chinese culture, and are also important to me…. When your son or daughter is married, you know how to introduce their spouse to your friends: you call them your son or son-in-law or your daughter or daughter-in-law. Everyone knows what that means. It means they are related to you and are part of your family."