Four years ago, I wrote the essay below. Upon re-reading it, I find that it still conveys all the sentiments I feel today when the California Supreme Court struck down existing law forbidding gays to marry, essentially legalizing gay marriage.

San Francisco was just ahead of its time in this regard.

I wrote the essay when Gavin Newsom allowed Gay couples to get married at City Hall here in San Francisco. I thought I should re-run it here in celebration of the new dawn for gay rights. In it I said I’m proud to be a San Franciscan.

But now I’m also proud to be a Californian – so read on…
—-
Welcome to San Francisco –

“Get used to it,” an eccentric aunt of mine warned us when we first came here in the mid-’70s, fresh from a war-torn Vietnam. I was 11 years old, speaking not a word of English.

My aunt, a San Franciscan since the late 1960s, drove me and my family to the Castro district our second week in the city, and parked. In our car, we watched as two men kissed passionately on the sidewalk.

“My god,” my mother gasped, covering her mouth. That was when my aunt said it: “Get used to it,” she whispered. “This is San Francisco.”

I didn’t know what to make of that kiss. I remember staring from the backseat of the car, however, until one of the men turned to me and winked.

Fast-forward three decades. As I watched two men on the steps of City Hall kissing last week, having just been declared spouses by the city authorities, I finally know how I feel: Proud.

I don’t use that word lightly. I’m not always proud to be American. I, along with a hundred thousand here, protested against the war in Iraq last year. I’m not always proud to be Vietnamese either, having seen members of my own clan at each other’s throat in a bloody civil war that proved pointless afterwards. But I have to say I am proud to be San Franciscan.

For to live in San Francisco these days is to live with a sense of what’s possible for the rest of America
Others, including my own relatives, shake their heads and sigh. They think San Francisco has finally gone off the deep end, that the city is seceding from the rest of the country. But I think ours is a message that’s closer to the opposite: Tolerance is the only possible recourse for America, especially when, as an empire, it is forsaking all ideals for dubious gains, waging an ill-fought war in Iraq, and all but tarnishing its reputation overseas with a “might makes right” mentality.

Those men in tuxedos on their way to get married, those women who hugged and wept on their way out of City Hall with flowers in their hair, having been declared legally married by the city, seemed to speak of something far larger than gay rights.

In a way, San Francisco has always been a more American city than most of us who live here realize. Though small, it has always rejected simplification. Known for its flower power and hippie ‘60s, it has also become a city of non-white immigrants in my lifetime.

The gay Mecca of the West has become an Asian city. Whites make up 41 percent of its citizens; Asians are not far behind at 33 percent. There is no majority left in a city whose compass is pointing increasingly toward the Pacific.

On Chinese New Year the city schools shut down. The Chinese New Year parade precedes the Gay Pride Parade, which is followed by Carnival in the Mission. It’s a city where private passions have a tendency to spill out into the public domain.

After all, with no real suburb to speak of, its residents live in overlapping neighborhoods. It’s a city that takes my aunt’s message to heart. Get used to it. We’ve had to, because, unlike expansive Los Angeles, San Francisco has only 47 square miles. We’re constantly in each other’s face, like it or not.

Thus, we tolerate. We integrate. We learn to like our cosmopolitan lifestyle, our global sense of self. Thus, down the street from where I live, a gay couple walk hand in hand past the old Chinese lady doing her morning tai chi next to the homeless teenager reading a romance novel outside the coffee shop owned by Middle Easterners. Meanwhile, a twittering flock of Asian children wearing colorful backpacks rush up the hill on their way to school.

Indeed, growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in this open, cosmopolitan city was more or less a walk in the park. I never felt like an outsider here. If anything, it was the city that gave me dreams of possibilities beyond my own conservative, Confucian-bound upbringing. It was here that I fancied for myself a vocation that shocked my parents: writer. It is here that I see myself as a central character in the latest modern American novel.

San Francisco is in the limelight again, and I think for a good reason. The scene at City Hall may seem like the Boston Tea Party to outsiders. But we’re not seceding. We’re only sending back hopeful images of a tolerant America, from a nearby future.

Andrew’s book, “Perfume Dreams”

This message came into the mail this morning, an obvious spam but it got my attention:

Here’s what it says:

From: hard_snip@yahoo.com
Subject: good news
Date: May 15, 2008 5:45:13 AM PDT
To: lam@pacificnews.org

Attention…......
This is the only way I could contact you for now, I Want you to be very careful about this and keep the secret with you until I make out a space for us to see, You have no need of knowing who I am,or where am from,I know this may sound suprising to you but it”s the situation, I have being paid a ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer,its one I believe you call a friend,I have followed you closely for a while now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusation he leveled against you,Do not contact the police or try to send a copy of this to them, because if you do I will know, and might be pushed to do what I have being paid to do,besides this is the first time i turned out to be a betrayer in my job.I took pitty on you,thats why i have made up my mind to help you if you are willing to help yourself.

Now listen,I will arrange for us to see one on one but before that I need the amount of 30,000 pounds,I will come to your home, or you determine where you wish we meet,I repeat do not arrange for the cops, if you play hard to get,it will be extended to your family,do not set any camera to cover us or set up any tape to record our conversation,my employer is in my control now,An account will be provided for you to make a part payment of 20,000 pounds first which will serve as a garantee that you are ready to coperate,then one of my boys will deliver a video tape or i can even download it to you.It contains his request for me to terminate you(the tape recorded our conversation)which will be enough evidence for you to take any legal action against him b/4 he goes employing another person for the job. you will pay me the ballance of 10,000 pounds in cash once he delivers the tape to you or i send it to you,beware of business associates and friends,

WARNING:DO NOT CONTACT THE POLICE,MAKE SURE YOU STAY INDOORS ONCE IT IS 7:30PM UNTIL THIS WHOLE THING IS SORTED OUT,YOUR NEGLIGENCE IN ANY OF THESE WARNINGS,YOU WILL HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME.
you do not have much time so get back to me as possible.

Bye.
hugo

Hugo didn’t say anything about blogging it so I’m glad at least for that. I don’t have 10,000 pounds – is that like a million US dollars now? – but I do have a full bar so I’ll be waiting for him tonight with my martini shaker.

btw, I checked and there’s a website that warns people of the latest spams called Switch.com and the above scam is well reported. I got that cute pix from their site.

Nice reading to get early in the morning indeed.

Andrew

That was the title of Time magazine article over the weekend… as if somehow this is feasible. The junta is universally condemned by the world’s press and esp. american press, and perhaps rightly so, for their failure to help their own people and their interference with international help effort.

But to invade another country? Even for humanitarian purpose, that is a serious issue, given the fact that it is obviously a permanent quagmire.

America seems to think that invasion is a process that takes a few months and then it’s done. “Mission Accomplished!” But in reality, esp. in the old world, just as saving someone means taking on permanent relationship, taking over a country means a long term committment that goes beyond feeding the starving and treating the sick – but setting up infrastructure, build new political system, and pumping resources that we no longer have.

McCain got it right when he said we’ll be in Iraq for 100 years. He understands how long it will take to set things right again when you break … them.

It also strikes me as arrogant that the US still thinks it can lead in humanitarian aid in the world considering its own abysmal failure in saving its own people after Katrina. Folks waited in water for days – just like the Burmese in the Irriwaddi delta – for aid that didn’t come and it was foreign aids that poured in – from Latin America, from Mexico, and even Cuba offered doctors. We should have “invaded” new orleans, and we didn’t.

Besides, ask the Hmong or the Vietnamese who were abandoned by the Americans after the war ended in Vietnam what it’s like to have been offered friendship and visions of democracy and then left behind to be hunted by their enemies. If we invade, will we get bored and bothered, and decide to betray in a few months and let the Junta go at it when we’re gone?

That said, a coalition of Asean countries – Thailand, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and so on – should put pressures on the Junta to open up. Thailand and China esp. hold enormous influences over Burma as they are main trading partners.

I think before invasion – a pipe dream – persuasion (rather than mere condemnation) is the key for realistic change in that country.

Andrew Lam’s videos

Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora

Side Bar:

Media Contacts: U.S.: Jan Dragin – 24/7, +011 781 925 1526, jdragin@gis.net
Lesley Crosson/Church World Service, +011 212 870-2676,
lcrosson@churchworldservice.org

NEWS UPDATE

Local Organizations Making the Difference, Delivering Food, Water, Shelter
in Myanmar

‘If communities don’t get rice seeds in the ground within month,
there may be no rice crops for years to come’

BANGKOK – Tues May 13, 2008– Ten days after cyclone Nargis devastated parts
of Myanmar (Burma), as tens of thousands of people still wait for
assistance, global humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) reports
that its support is reaching survivors in need. Meanwhile CWS continues to
expand its fundraising appeal to support relief in the country.

In the face of aid shipment and distribution challenges facing international
sources, CWS reports that local organizations are distributing food, water
and emergency shelter supplies throughout affected areas with commodities
either purchased elsewhere within Myanmar, or purchased regionally and
transported through channels that are still open into the country.

Myanmar maintains open land-trade routes with Thailand and India that allow
for importation of supplies, “So local markets still have commodities
available,” says Donna Derr, Director of Church World Service’s Emergency
Response Program.

“And local organizations have the advantage of knowing how best to obtain
and distribute those goods, to where they’re needed most,” she said.

CWS first provided humanitarian assistance in Burma in 1959 and has
long-term partnerships in the country. CWS holds an appropriate license from
the U.S. government to provide financial help to Myanmar for emergency aid
purposes. The agency’s Asia Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok is organizing
response among faith-based, non-governmental organizations that are members
of the Action by Churches Together International Alliance.

CWS, whose initial fundraising appeal issued the day following the disaster,
surpassed its goal in hours and has been expanded a third time to address
the scope of needs as they are being assessed.

Church World Service and ACT member agencies are warning against an
impending and longer term food security crisis: “If communities don’t get
rice seeds in the ground within the next month, there may not be rice crops
for years to come,” says Derr.

“It’s critical that we ensure that this major disaster doesn’t turn into an
ongoing catastrophe.”

Exacerbating the problem of getting rice for food and for planting quickly
into the hands of survivors, experts report that salt from the flood waters
have corrupted planting fields in the affected areas of Myanmar.

CWS and ACT member agencies in Bangkok said in communiqués today, “Now is
the time to support local organizations who are on the ground providing much
needed urgent assistance. The commitments made to survivors now will help
them ensure that they can rebuild their lives.”

Church World Service and its Asia-Pacific Region offices are particularly
suited to respond in this kind of crisis, given CWS’s 60-year history of
engaging local organizations to meet humanitarian needs. The agency’s
Indonesia offices were among the first responders to the 2004 tsunami and
continue to work through local groups in that country’s ongoing
rehabilitation.

In the U.S. in addition to public donations and other grants received by
Church World Service to date, CWS has received support from faith
organizations including the United Methodist Church/UMCOR, the Presbyterian
Church USA/Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the United Church of
Christ, the Church of the Brethren, and Episcopal Relief & Development,
among others.

Church World Service provides relief and recovery, sustainable development,
and refugee resettlement and protection services worldwide and is funded
through public donations, grants and by the support of 35 U.S. Christian
denominations.

Contributions to Church World Service’s Cyclone Nargis response may be made
by: telephone, at (800) 297-1516; by mailing a check to Church World
Service, 28606 Phillips Street, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515; or through
secure online contribution at:
https://secure.churchworldservice.org/catalog/display.php?sid=1.

###

I’ll be participating in another Literary Death Match this saturday at the Richshaw Stop. For those interested do come by…

San Francisco
LDM8 was fantastically filled with poetry, and Rupert Estanislao swiped the crown. Read the excitements here.

Now we ready for the All-Star Literary Death Match (Episode 9) which will double as the release party for Opium6: Go Green! (But Save Me First). We won’t dare tell you the particulars, but expect an LDM like never before featuring past champions, the return of hilarious judges, a finale that will end in crying laughter, and (we’re not kidding when we say this) more!

Hosted by LDM co-creator Todd Zuniga (after his accidental move to Brooklyn), participants include Stephen Elliott, Michelle Richmond, Kirk Read, Jon Wolanske, Kurt Bodden, Sam Hurwitt, Sean Finney, Andrew Lam, Tony Dushane and more!

Where: Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St., SF
When: May 10, 2008
Time: 7 p.m.
Cost: $10 (and a free copy of Opium6: Go Green! (But Save Me First)

All proceeds support Opium Magazine.

PS> I won : >

MP4 will follow soon….
what a blast …

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, NCM – before it became New America Media – interviewed me and my father, general Lam Q Thi, along with 2 other Vietnamese regarding Vietnam and its relationship with Vietnamese expats…

Here are the 3 segments..

enjoy…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Links to Andrew’s Youtube page:
Youtube page of Andrew Lam’s videos

“Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora”