Most of us are only aware of people of the LGBT community that are Caucasian since the tabloids often talk about them. We often forget that there are other people who are part of the LGBT community as well. Here are 10 LGBT members that are Asians.
- Cuc Vu
Cuc is a Vietnamese woman who is currently the Director of Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. She is married to her partner Gwen Migita and the pair can be seen bursting out with smiles in this article.
Cuc has achieved a lot of accomplishments throughout the years. Among those are shaping the culture of Human Rights Campaign (HRC) into a diversified workplace, securing $300k from corporations, foundations and individuals and implemented a program that educates straight people of color and white LGBTs about the priority issues of LGBT people of color. You can check out more about her here.
- Magdalen Hsu-Li
Magdalen is a Chinese American who identifies herself as bisexual. She enjoys a variety of hobbies such as painting, playing piano, singing and song writing. Her songs were written by herself and according to the Performing Songwriter, New York Times and Curve magazine it was simply amazing. You can read Magdalen’s journal in her own website.
- Parvez Sharma
Parvez is a gay New York based Indian filmmaker and writer. A Jihad For Love and A Sinner In Mecca are two films directed by him which touched on controversial subject of religion specifically Islam. A Jihad For Love main plot centered around the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims. He received GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary in the year 2009 for that movie. You can check out the trailer here (or below) if you are interested.
- Sunil Babu Pant
Sunil is the first openly gay Nepalese politician. He is also the founder and director (until 2013) of Blue Diamond Society which also happens to be the first Nepal’s first LGBTI rights organization. Blue Diamond Society was set up in 2001 and exists till today while carrying out their mission as seen here.
- Pauline Park
Pauline is a fellow transgender who was born in Korea but was adopted by European American parents. Pauline is a gender rights advocate. She was the co-founder of the Queens Pride House and New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy in the years 1997 and 1998 respectively. She has her own website which she talks about her interests which are history, philosophy, politics, religion, arts, music, theater and opera and literature and poetry.
- Tan Peng
He is the first Singaporean artist to come out as gay. His art was featured by Straits Times in the 1980s. His charcoal sketches portray the issues such as oppression, pressure to marry, invisibility, repressive religions, safer sex and HIV caregiving and police entrapment. You can see those sketches here.
- Faisal Alam
As a fellow Pakistani American, Faisal founded the Al-Fatiha Foundation in the year 1998. Al-Fatiha Foundation aims to advance the cause of LGBT Muslims. He resigned from being the President of that foundation in 2004. However, he is still active in other aspects such as being the member of the Advisory Committee of the LGBT Program at Human Rights Watch.
- Patrick S. Cheng
Patrick is not the priest you meet in Sunday sermons. He is a not only a priest but also a theologian as well as attorney. To top it off he is openly gay. He has his own website and also contributes to Huffington Post. Apart from that, he is also the coordinator of Queer Asian Spirit.
- Aiza Seguerra
Aiza is a Filipino actor, singer, songwriter and guitarist. Back in 2007, Aiza came out publicly as a lesbian. However, in August 2014 where he previously identified as female came out as a transgender man. He even married a fellow actress Liza Diño in 2014. On August 12, 2016, Aiza was appointed by President Rodrigo Duterte as Chairperson of the National Youth Commission.
- Jason Wu
If you are looking for your gay fashion designer, you should check out his website. He was born in Taipei, Taiwan but emigrated to Vancouver, Canada at the young age of 9. He became famous for designing the dresses Michelle Obama wore during the first and second inauguration of President Barack Obama. He married Gustavo Rangel in April 2016 at Mexico. You can see their adorable pictures on Vogue.
If you want to learn more about the other LGBT members you should check out this article from Huffington Post! I hope you enjoyed reading this list!