Defeating anti-Asian discrimination in the SF Gay bars in 1980-1981. Gay Asian transcriptions, papers. 1977-1981.
This is a reference post to provide some background information.
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Reference post to be used distribute historical materials.
SF Gay day Parade in 1979. They started out with 7 people, and as they marched down the street they pulled friends into the group and they ened up with more than 50 people. In one case there was a tug of war with a friend whose lover didn’t want him to join and his friends pulling on him to join. It went on for about 20 seconds and then the guy let go of the closeted lover.
From left to right, James Jackson, Terrance Chen, Russell Low, Ed Sebesta in yellow t-shirt. The person behind Russel is Jeff Doung.
Histories, Transcriptions, Essays from the late 1970s to early 1980s.
Gay Asian life in SF compiled by myself and going to the historical archives.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s I was very active in supporting Gay Asians in multiple ways. I organized a campaign against SF Gay bar discrimination against them. I also dug up historical resources showing that there was a Gay past in both China and Japan.
Also, I transcribed tapes, one of Gay Asian coming out stories in 1977 and there was a lecture on Gays in Japan by an American who had been a professor there for some years.
Poster for the Gay Asian Association in Berkeley.
Deaccessioning
At some point your historical papers need to see an archive. However, once they go to the archive, they hold the copyright for all future use, but we are allowed to use them to publish prior.
Besides sharing them with the old gang who was part of the effort back in the day, we are going to use this published book to share with historical archives our materials.
I am going to be using this post to explain what the materials are and to let academic groups and scholars know that this material is available.
Published on Amazon
It is published as a Kindle, color paperback regular color & paper, and premium color & paper hardcover.
The hardcovers will be purchased by myself and sent to archives and university libraries to be kept as part of the historical record. Archives and university libraries don’t like paperbacks.
BTW, Amazon assumes that when you typed “Edward Sebesta” that you wanted “Edward Sebastian” instead and shows you the wrong books.
So these are the direct links.
Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Against-Anti-Asian-Discrimination-Records-ebook/dp/B0DRT2CBJV/
Paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Against-Anti-Asian-Discrimination-Records/dp/B0DRXK93B7/
Hardcover
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DRZHS38H/
For scholars on a budget, just contact me and I can share the PDF.
Randy Kikukawa was the only Gay Asian that was willing to stand up and get interviewed by the press. The signs were written by me.
How I learned not to take people’s expressed liberal/moral stands too seriously.
I wrote up in great detail the fight against anti-Asian discrimination and very importantly the little subtle tricks to misdirect or undermind us. This was SF around 1980 and supposedly everyone was against racism, except when it wasn’t something abstract, but real and something they would have to deal with.
SF Supervisor Harry Britt, when hearing of the problem of discrimination, told me with a sad tone that he talks to the bar owners and says they shouldn’t do that. The think was it was against the law. It wasn’t a matter of convincing them. Harry Britt could have asked any number of agencies to investigate the matter or spoken out about it publicly. He thought I was stupid. So did a lot of Gay Democrats think I was stupid. They learned otherwise.
There were endless excuses made for the multiple id requests to rationalize them as not about racial discrimination.
The Gay Democrats in SF were hoping that with an alliance with the Asian Democrats in SF, they could achieve power against the entrenched Italian/Irish Democrats. News articles with us picketing Gay bars with Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/English signs undermined the potential of an alliance.
I should explain though, the Asian groups in SF didn’t care about racial discrimination either when the victims were Gay. Only the local Japanese American paper ran an article about it. Something about having your parents put in concentration camps during World War II makes you more sensitive to discrimination.
If you ever face an opposition, in this case the entire Gay leadership was entirely trying to stop me, this paper gives you an idea of what you will face regardless of the issue.
I basically kicked the opposition’s ass. The discrimination stopped. I told them next time it would be the liquor licenses.
I learned that you needed to have a heart of stone and be totally determined, and that people were often friendly to misdirect you or undermine you.
Left to right was James Jackson, Randy Kikukawa, and me, Edward H. Sebesta.
Let there be no doubt that this discrimination was real. I would see one id asked for, two ids asked for and so on until the person didn’t have 4 or 5 ids.
Miscellaneous
I left all my historical records on the Lesbian & Gay Engineers And Scientists at an archive back in 1987, when I went to Texas. I was afraid that if Texas didn’t work out, I would have trouble moving back with everythings.
It turns out that a professor has discovered them and recently I was sent a paper to review and give feedback. I did and finished sending everything back in Dec. 2024. So a paper will be coming out about that.
As a published historian, it is sort of an odd feeling to be a historical object yourself.
Yeaha, you looked great. I also love the cover of the book.