Examiner – You mentioned that you’re not asking, you’re telling, and that the reason you’re going to the March on Washington is because we should be demanding our equal rights across the board now. Does that also mean that you support going back to the ballot to repeal Prop 8 in 2010?
Dan Choi – Yes, again I think it’s the responsibility that we have as leaders to act now. I don’t buy the arguments that we should wait. We are in the biblical sense, more than conquerors, more than warriors, but we’re endowed with this spirit of equality, of all those things that we learned growing up. We refuse to take this political expedient method of waiting and seeing when we can have better odds, as if we’re going to wait for the landscape to change, and we’re going to give ourselves a lot of time to wait for it to change. Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of the coming out to people and doing a lot of that missionary work is important, but that should not be an excuse to slink away from a fight.
If we have the opportunity, and we see ourselves in the position where we can fight, I think it’s our responsibility to do so. It’s not just a political goal. Every advocacy group and every citizen has to realize that there are people who are watching us, people who are not old enough to vote right now. Some people will watch us through the lenses of our history books, and they’ll see what we did and they’ll judge us. In your chance to fight, did you stand up? What did you do in the great battle, or did you wait for somebody else to fight it for you? Well, here is where we separate the people who are really our advocates and who are really for the pure; the primary meaning of what it means to be American, and here we have the chance to do it.
Examiner – It’s interesting that you’re saying this, because three organizations of people of color, the Asian community, the African American community, and the Latino community said no, we need to wait because we’re not giving enough time to reach out to the communities of color. I’m also an advocate for 2010 and I know quite a few people of color that are for 2010, but they’re not as visible. I find it kind of interesting that you’re for 2010 and wish more people could see our side.
Dan Choi – There’s nothing genetic about people of color that make them want to wait for 2012. Certain advocacy groups or lobbying groups of people of color make certain decisions largely based on political timetables, but I know, as a son of an immigrant, my parents didn’t wait for the next generation. They didn’t wait for me to immigrate. They didn’t say, “well, the easier thing would be for our kids to come”. We have to take the lessons of our parents and stop looking at what we can analyze politically. We know in our gut that we are part of the narrative of our parents and our grandparents that wanted something better for us. As fighters and warriors within this battle for equality, we know that right now is our chance, and so we owe it to everybody not to back down. I was taught by my parents that everybody will be watching you no matter what, not because you’re doing anything special, but because you’re a minority. We have to realize that whatever we do, because everybody will be looking at us, we can’t just pretend to be something that we’re not. Because we know that deep down inside of us, we know that our parents taught us there are certain things worth fighting for, and worth risking our entire lives for.
Examiner – So if everyone is saying that it is really difficult, and we need to go in the minority communities to change their hearts and minds, what do you think is probably the best tactic to do that and meet the deadline of 2010?
Dan Choi – There are certainly a lot of feelings that the source of this is misunderstanding within the churches, and that the sermons are the reason that this is all happening, but I think it actually starts in the families. We all need to teach everybody that those who are closeted within their minority communities, within their workplaces, and within their families that they need to just come out. If we say that we need to continue waiting for the next chance, for the next few years, then that’s another message to everybody else that people can wait to come out. It’s the same message that I have been fighting against my entire life. I think deep down inside, a lot of people have said things like, “I should never come out to my parents because they’re just going to die and once they are dead, then I can divorce my wife that I married just so they could be happy”, or maybe “once they go away, then I can be true”. I don’t want to wait for them to die, because it’s not an act of love to wait for them to die or to allow them to live their lives homophobic. People have also said, “well it’s the older generation and they’re all going to die so don’t worry about them”. I don’t buy that either because I love them too. I love those people that voted Yes on Prop 8 just as much as I love the people that voted No on Prop 8 because they’re Americans. They have a right to do that, but I don’t think they have the right to be diluted into thinking that we’re one thing when we’re not; that our love is something that can be lied about. I don’t think that they deserve to die knowing this falsehood.
Examiner – So what did your parents say when you came out? How did you tell them?
Dan Choi - My boyfriend and I had been together for a year and I had to make the conscious decision on whether or not I was going to keep saying he was a she when having conversations with my mom. I had to decide whether I was going to continue to say that Matthew was Martha. After we had been together for a year, my mom was beginning to like this lady and wanted to meet her. After my relationship started to get serious, I started realizing that this was going to be impossible. It was really that love that made the whole situation precarious. Love can do a whole lot of stuff to you. It can cause a lot of ruckus.
I came home with the express content of coming out to my parents. Basically in January, just about 8 months ago, I was at home, and it was on my heart to tell them. It was a big burden. My mom knew it. It didn’t stop her from saying every five minutes, when are you going to marry a Korean girl? When are you going to marry a Korean girl? One morning before she went to work, I just told her. She held my hand and said, “I love you, but gay just doesn’t exist. It’s a lie. God doesn’t make people that way”. She was smiling as she said it and it just really hurt me. That was probably the most painful thing; to know that she was trying to smile in a way to try and make me feel better, but it actually made me feel worse.
So then of course came the condemnation and then after about 3 months, we finally started getting angry about it and letting out all of these confused emotions and those diatribes of about 8 bible versus; a handful of bible versus that make homosexuality according to them at the time, the worst sin. I was always taught by my dad, a Southern Baptist minister, that the greatest sins were not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior and not loving thy neighbor as you love yourself. In no way, in any form or fashion did that include homosexuality. Now all of a sudden it became the greatest sin and it was 100% wrong. I realized that those were backlashes and irrational statements that were coming out. I made sure that they knew I came out to them because I loved them. When we had very angry conversations and were yelling at each other, at the end we hugged and made sure that we all knew it was because it was difficult. We are close; we are ultimately so close that this isn’t going to come between us even though there are going to be hard times and even harder times dealing with this. I want to tell them that at least I didn’t marry a non-Korean girl (laughs).
Examiner – You know as soon as they come to terms with you being with a guy, they’re going to ask if he’s Korean.
Dan Choi – In a lot of ways, my mom would say that’s even worse because now there are two men that can’t make Korean babies (laughs). I realize that there are certain expectations that Korean parents have, and in a lot of ways, it’s more difficult to come home and bring in a non-Korean wife than it is to bring home a boyfriend if you’re a gay Korean. But in regards to coming out to your parents, I think it’s important for people to realize that you have to give them some time. That doesn’t mean you have to wait to tell them. In fact it’s the opposite. Because it takes time, you have to tell them now and you can’t wait 10 years because it could take 10 years for them to come to terms with it. Put them first in your life if you believe in the tenants of honoring your mother and your father. Tell them now, and don’t make them go through the pain later. Don’t put them through the shame where after they die, all your relatives realize that they were so homophobic that they would never be strong enough to be able to deal with that. How shameful is that? Us not giving them the opportunity to go through that is also shameful on us.
Dan Choi at a repeal Prop 8 rally (Photo courtesy of Dan Choi
Examiner – Whenever you speak in public, you’re always very articulate, poised, and professional. It seems like the community could use someone like you, a role model who has been in the military and can actually speak intelligently. Would you ever consider being a PR person for the movement or a leader in the movement; a person that would go on TV and be a point of contact?
Dan Choi – People have asked me if I would you ever consider going into politics, would I ever run for office, and I always respond the same way. I believe that speaking out is the same thing as holding one of those positions. In our short lives, we only have a few chances to make an impact with our words, but you never know. The times that you prepare to tell somebody might be the least impactful. You might say something to somebody in the course of your day-to-day living, and that could be the most impactful thing you do. Just because you’re on TV doesn’t mean that you’re making the biggest impact for the movement. I think that I would love to do that, to continue speaking out, but you’re never going to replace the person that tells his brother who tells the cousin or ventures out to tell this homophobic person. I could never do the same as those people could do. We need all the spokespeople that we can muster, and it starts at home. It starts with us.
Examiner – Do you have a foundation that people can donate?
Dan Choi – Knights Out. One of the things we just did as far as repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was to put an advertisement in the military academy magazine that basically advertises who we are. Those little messages that we can give to other people, that’s essentially what we do. There are other organizations as well, particularly with the March on Washington. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is going to be a big part of that. The fall hearings on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell are going to be happening around the same time as the march, so we will be using that time to galvanize a lot of the veterans to write their personal stories and submit them to Congress. We also need to raise money for the National Equality March because this activist training event will have great leaders and speakers that will be there and we’ll meet each other, and we can network and find out the plan for the next couple of months and years. We are the new generation that’s going to make change, the marriage generation, the repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell generation. Essentially, we’re the integrity generation.
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