George Takei - February 20, 2008

Where Few Have Gone Before:

Coming Out in Hollywood and the Asian American Community

The first person George Takei met on his recent speaking engagement at PFLAG LA was Barry Mason, a PFLAG Dad, who said: “I used to make you disappear.” It was Mason, in his first job out of film school, not Scotty, who had helped to produce the famous “beaming up” special effect. A delighted Takei and his partner Brad proceeded upstairs to find not just an audience, but a room full of friends. 

His response was generous and joyful. Neither shy nor aloof, he mingled with the audience members, fully engaged in listening to their stories and responding out of his own experience. Used to an audience of thousands at Star Trek conventions, he held the 85 people in the room enthralled as he talked with great candor about his own difficult journey as a Japanese American, gay man. 

A pivotal event in his life occurred when he was eight years old. American troops came to his home to force his family into a waiting truck bound for the stables of Santa Anita, the first stop on the way to an internment camp in the swamp land of Alabama. Listeners gasped as he told of soldiers with fixed bayonets striping his family of their home, their business, and, except for a couple of suitcases, their possessions. As a close observer of his parents’ humiliation and pain, he made up his mind never to cause them shame, always to make them proud.

When he returned to school, he was tormented because of his ethnicity and described to the horrified audience a disparaging teacher who referred to him as: “that little Jap boy.” He kept his difficulties to himself to protect his parents. Gradually, he came to realize that there was another difference between him and his classmates: he was gay. His sense of isolation was profound. Speaking to the young gay men and women in the audience, he recounted how difficult it was to be gay in a world with no PFLAG, no Gay/Straight Alliances. 

Both unwilling and unable to downplay his Japanese American identity, he could and did hide his sexual orientation. That is, until he met his partner Brad, and proudly took him to cast parties, get-togethers with other actors, and, most important of all, home. PFLAG parents and children sympathized with his story of a dismayed mother, who grew ever more attached to her son and his partner, spending her final years cared for by both in their home. All in the audience were stirred by Takei’s story of coming out to the press to protest Governor Schwarzenegger’s veto of the legislation legalizing gay marriage in 2005. 

Despite, or perhaps because, of the difficulties he has endured, George Takei is passionate about democracy, speaking out not only on the subject of marriage equality, but also testifying before the Congress of the United States about the internment experience and the need for reparations to the Japanese Americans who suffered it. He described an America that, over time, has grown more inclusive and more just. He concluded by urging each member of the audience, particularly the younger listeners, to work to make the United States more true to the ideals of its founding documents.

This emotional and unexpectedly intimate talk engaged everyone in the audience on a personal level, a connection that spilled out in the question and answer period and persisted after the formal program was over. People crowded around Takei, welcoming him, thanking him. He generously took time with each and everyone, answering questions, posing for photographs, and signing the occasional autograph. His partner, observing the warm interactions between Takei and the PFLAG audience said, “George is enjoying himself. He feels at home here.”

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