By Ross Murray, SDGLN
Viet Rainbow of Orange County (VROC), a community-based organization working to promote positive visibility and equitable treatment of LGBT people, may potentially be blocked a second time from participating in the Tet Parade, Orange County’s annual Lunar New Year celebration, scheduled in February.
LGBT rallied at last year’s parade
The Lunar New Year Parade in Westminster, CA has been in existence for over 30 years and was always ran by the city of Westminster. In 2010, a group of Vietnamese-American LGBT organizations came together under the “Partnerships of Viet LGBT organizations” and applied to participate in the parade for the first time in its history. However, various Vietnamese religious groups attempted to exclude LGBT people from the parade. They were unsuccessful as the city was an organizer and could not legally exclude.
That changed in February of 2013. The city could not fund the parade due to budget constraints. Two organizations including the Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California and Vietnamese Marines Association took over and “privatized” the event. Vietnamese-American LGBT people were excluded from participating under the premise that “Being LGBT is not part of the Vietnamese culture.”
Read the full story by Ross Murray from SDGLN.
