At the age of 11, I had already figured out that I was attracted to other men. I didn’t learn the meaning of words like "gay" or "queer" until much later, but one thing was always clear: This topic was not safe to discuss openly.

The Korean American community in which I grew up was based in our local church, which was a punishing place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer people. Our leaders constantly told us that people who lived outside of certain strict norms governing sexual behavior and gender expression were destined for miserable lives and condemnation in the afterlife. I, and (after I told them) my parents, knew that if anyone in our community figured out that I was queer, it would mean disaster.

Our family remained locked in silence for many years, until 10 years later, I made the difficult decision to start coming out to my close friends. Eventually, I built a support network for myself, rooted in a community of other LGBTQ people of Asian Pacific American descent.

"We are alone, your father and I," my mother once told me, weeping. "We have no one to talk to about this, not our friends, not our family. We only have each other." They derived strength and a sense of belonging from their involvement in the Korean American community, and had no desire to stand apart from it. But this membership came at a price: their constant silence about their struggle to raise and love their queer son.

My mother’s words devastated me. Until then, I’d never directly confronted the fact that my parents had been undergoing a battle that was perhaps even lonelier than mine. I felt enormous guilt that my queerness could cause them so much pain.

Then, I realized that my sexual orientation was not the issue. The real issue was that the Korean American community as a whole, through repression and silence, has created an environment where my family cannot speak openly, for fear of judgment, harassment, or at worst, violence.

Many LGBTQ Korean Americans remain invisible in order to survive, but invisibility does not equal nonexistence. Although not all of us are public about our identities, we are active in Korean American cultural, political and student organizations. We worship at churches and temples. We are active in Korean adoptee communities. We live, work, eat and play in Koreatowns throughout the United States. Even those of us have chosen to live apart from the Korean American community, or been forced out because of intolerance, remain connected through our families and friends.

Yet, we often wonder whether it will ever be possible to reconcile our bonds to our Korean American communities with our lives as LGBTQ people, particularly when the more homophobic strands of our community come to the forefront.

In California in 2000, Korean American churches mobilized in massive numbers to support the California Defense of Sexual Responsibility Act, which would have barred public agencies from "endorsing, education, recognizing, or promoting homosexuality as acceptable, moral behavior." Religious leaders exhorted their congregants to vote for the regressive legislation, stating that being queer would result in "condemnation, death, and judgment."

LGBTQ Korean Americans and their allies successfully organized against this campaign, working with non-queer allies in the community to combat the proposition, but nothing erases the knowledge that at a critical juncture, many people in our own communities stood against us.

Just as powerful as outright homophobia is the taboo that still shrouds any discussion of these issues. I am involved in the Dari Project, which was founded by LGBTQ Korean Americans in order to communicate our stories to people who, for the most part, have never had the opportunity to hear LGBTQ people talk openly about our experiences and struggles.

We created the Dari Project because no one else was going to do this work for us. Our organizations and institutions are not explicitly addressing the issues facing LGBTQ Korean American people, or working to create spaces that are affirming of our queer identities.

Korean American leaders and institutions claim to represent and be accountable to all of us. If that is true, they need to recognize that LGBTQ people are embedded in their organizations, their communities, their congregations, and perhaps, even their own families. Many of these people are struggling in isolation.

This call is especially directed to our progressive organizations. Many of these groups are doing incredible work in battling sexism and violence within our communities, fighting for immigrant rights, economic justice and peace on the Korean peninsula. But only a few have put the struggles of LGBTQ Korean Americans on their agendas, rendering us invisible, even in spaces that value social justice.

I am asking our leaders and institutions to recognize what is undeniable truth: that LGBTQ people are part of the larger Korean American community, and that a truly progressive vision of our society must include us.

Stephen Kang is a queer Korean American man based in New York, and a member of the Dari Project, www.dariproject.org

Reprinted with permission of the author