Political bias in Chinese New Year's Parade

The San Francisco Chinese New Year's Parade, happening today, is a big event, drawing a half million or more spectators, and serving as the largest public event for the Bay Area's large (and growing) Chinese population. Unfortunately, this year's event is marred by gross poltical bias. The Falun Gong movement, undergoing savage repression in China, but an active part of the overseas Chinese community, is being banned from sponsoring a float. Meanwhile, a float promoting same sex marriage, will be featured in the parade.

It is a private event (using public streets - like the St. Paddy's Day parade in NYC), so organizers have the right to include or exclude anyone they choose. But I really wonder if the feelings of the community are being expressed, or if the feelings of activists are what count. Actually, I don't wonder at all. It is the latter.

Organizers of the Chinese New Year Parade typically try to keep politics out of the annual procession, but a same-sex marriage float successfully made a bid to be part of the festivities, and one honoring the spiritual movement Falun Gong will be notably absent from today's parade celebrating the Year of the Rooster.

The Falun Gong group submitted a proposal for a float that would include people in traditional Chinese dress demonstrating the traditional Chinese breathing exercises known as qigong.

"We feel we are part of the Chinese community, and the Chinese government spent so much time spreading propaganda," said Huy Lu, 37, of Daly City.

Since 1999, the Chinese government has cracked down on Falun Gong -- also known as Falun Dafa -- a movement influenced by Buddhism and Taoism that emerged in 1992.

But organizers rejected the group's application, saying the parade couldn't accommodate everyone who wanted to participate. In addition, the group handed out political material last year in violation of the parade's rules, said Wayne Hu, the director of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, which produces the parade.

But that's exactly what the producers of the same-sex marriage float plan to do.

With the blessing of the parade committee, the red and gold float, bearing a three-tiered wedding cake and gay and lesbian couples in traditional Chinese wedding garb, will wend its way past the crowd. Marchers will distribute heart-shaped balloons and information in English and Chinese about the issue. The project was funded by a $5,000 grant from the Horizon Foundation.

The Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, one of the sponsors of the marriage float, has participated in the parade for the past six years, but this is the group's first explicitly political contribution.

"The more that we are visible, the more that we are showing our community that we are here, we are about love, that we're committed, loving couples," said Jeanne Fong, who married her partner, Jennifer Lin, at San Francisco City Hall during the rush of gay marriages last winter. "We'll eventually be so mainstream, it will not be a big deal."

Proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage have been battling for the support of Asians in the Bay Area. In April, a largely Asian American and Christian crowd of more than 7,000 gathered in San Francisco to rally against extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. A coalition of gay rights groups responded a couple months later, organizing a smaller rally in the same park and pledging to continue efforts at the Chinese New Year Parade.

The float has not garnered much attention yet, but some in the community don't expect it to be very popular.

"Those who are in the parade represent only a small minority of the Chinese people," said the Rev. Thomas Wang, the president of the Great Commission Center International, a missionary organization based in Mountain View. "The Chinese people on the whole are very traditional. We do not agree with same-sex marriage. It's not only against nature, but it's against Chinese traditional virtue."

SF Chronicle: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/19/BAGKDBE1NV1.DTL

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