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JG: The Japanese American community, not to draw a blanket statement here... let me put it this way, there are elements of the Japanese American community that are fairly socially, socially conservative, and I'm wondering did that have an influence on you growing up? Was your family conservative on certain social issues like homosexuality?

MN: I'm sure they were, and I say that only because we never, my generation of Sanseis, I think I can honestly say we just never talked about certain things with our parents and... again, during my time growing up, issues like homosexuality, gay and gender issues just weren't, at least in our community, just weren't really up front on the radar screen. Even redress and the internment camps was not something they talked about often. I mean, they did talk about it, but it really wasn't until the, the redress movement in the mid '80s that they really came out of the closet on that. In terms of whether or not they were socially conservative, whether the Japanese American community was socially conservative, I would say, on balance, yes, but I've often said that degrees on the social political scale, whether you're liberal or conservative or in between, really have different, occupy different points on that scale. And even among racial-ethnic groups, I personally believe that there are differences. I mean, I once made the comment that you have white conservatives, you have black conservatives, but white conservatives and black conservatives, I don't believe, share the same space on the conservative end of the ideological spectrum. And I believe that's true for Japanese Americans. I think, yes, on balance I would say, at least for Japanese Americans growing up in my generation, our parents were conservative, we, to a certain extent, were and still are conservative, but our conservatism differs in degree, I believe, to conservatism when it is measured against other groups, because the issues are different and so therefore what's conservative for me on one issue might be liberal for someone else on, on that same issue.

JG: I guess the reason I'm asking, I mean, there was kind of a, a motive behind that question and it's really this, is that you've been very public in your, I guess, opposition to Prop 8 and you've been a, kind of a face for Asian Christianity, Asian pastors on the issue of same sex marriage and I'm just wondering if there's been any kind of, I don't know, would you call it backlash or something along those lines from within the community about your stance on same sex marriage?

MN: No. Surprisingly -- well, maybe not surprisingly, but there hasn't been any backlash. In fact, I've actually had people contact me to say they support me on, on my position. And even from people within the Asian American community who know where I stand and who are on the other side of the fence, they, they've told me, "I disagree with you, Mark, but I respect it." And so there's been this... what's the cliche? You know, this attitude, we agree to disagree on that issue, but no, there really hasn't been no backlash at all. And to be quite frank with you, Jim, I don't consider myself a crusader or anyone who's out in front on this issue. I mean, there are so many other people within the Asian American community who have risked much more than me in terms of comin' out on this issue. Just so happened that for whatever reasons I was one person who the leaders of the, the anti Prop 8 movement within the Asian American community chose with my permission to portray along those lines, and I think also what's at work here is, at least with respect to the issue of, of gender equality, homosexuality, gay and lesbian issues, Prop 8 here in California, I have a suspicion that most Japanese Americans, at the very least, sympathize with gays and lesbians. They may not agree, they may not know where they stand on the issue of the gay and lesbian lifestyle, and I think a lot of Japanese Americans are like a lot of people in general who are confused, whether it's that the gay lifestyle is a choice or just a given. I happen to think it's a given and it's not a choice, but regardless of what I think, I believe that a lot of Japanese Americans at the very least are sympathetic to the plight of gays and lesbians and the pressures and the hardships they face just living here in America. But what moves them to that point or that degree of sympathy, and not just sympathy but perhaps support for them, is our history and what we have been through, and yes, I'm talking about the internment, but even before the internment, a lot of instances of oppression and, and discrimination and segregation that Isseis and Niseis went through on their own. And it is that experience, or those experiences which, if nothing else, force us to at least be sympathetic with gays and lesbians and other people who are forced to struggle due to simply who they are, not for anything they have done.

You know, I always say when I'm in a group, particularly when I'm in a group of Niseis or Sanseis, on several occasions I've asked the question, "How many of you were in an internment camp or how many of you have grandparents or parents who were in an internment camp?" And inevitably every hand in the room will go up, and then I'll ask the question, "So what did any of you or your grandparents or parents, what did any of you do, or what is, what is it that they did to deserve being thrown into those internment camps?" And everyone will say they did nothing. Okay, which is the point that I always make. Well, in other words, your parents and your grandparents didn't deserve what they got, and the reality is very few people in life deserve what they get, very few people in life get what they deserve, and so why should we force very oppressive conditions on other groups of people when they have none, when they have done nothing to deserve the treatment that they get? And it's funny because whenever I do that little exercise with folks it really gets people to stop and question their own ways of thinking about how the world works or how it should work.

JG: Interesting. Interesting. Thank you for that. That was very enlightening.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.