First-Ever Bilingual LGBT PopUp Ads Air on YouTube

Powerful and innovative strategy to promote LGBT family acceptance reaching Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian communities

NEW YORK –  For the first time ever, emotionally moving videos of Asian parents of LGBT children appeared as pop up ads on YouTube before viewers watch their favorite Chinese Soap Opera, Filipino comedy, Korean drama, Vietnamese talent show, or Bollywood movie over LGBTQ Pride weekend and for the remainder of the month

This innovate effort to reach mainstream Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian audiences will build more acceptance of the LGBT community among America's fastest growing minority group -- Asian Americans – who are also the largest segment of new immigrants coming to the United States.  Many Asians are limited English proficient and conversant only their native languages.

The effort is spearhead by the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) and Asian Pride Project (APP).  Organizers hope to educate more Asian parents so that they will be supportive of their LGBT children, inspire more allies for the LGBT community, and change hearts and minds.  Several of the ads feature parents of transgender and gender nonconforming youth.

The ads will play on YouTube in seven (7) languages -- Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese Tagalog, Hindi – for Pride Month beginning Saturday, June 24 to June 30.  They coincided with the nation's largest LGBT Pride marches held on Sunday, June 25 in New York, San Francisco and Chicago.

The popup ads are part of a comprehensive Asian Family Acceptance Campaign, entitled "Family Is Still Family," which features:

• live workshops of API parents of LGBT children in a cities across the country,
• translated leaflets dispelling common myths and misconception about being LGBT in 20 Asian languages and scripts, and
• commercials on major Asian international channels (Sinovision, Television Korea, Zee TV). 

Last year's ads on Asian ethnic television reached 23 million Asian households across the nation.

Asian and South Asian LGBT youth face unique obstacles to coming out, including the fear of shaming and dishonoring their parents and ancestors. These cultural obstacles often lead to self-loathing, depression and suicide. This revolutionary multilingual "Family Is Still Family" campaign removes the specter of shame, silence and guilt by having parents open the closet door for their kids, offering unconditional love and acceptance.

"For generations, a culture of shame and misinformation has kept Asian American youth in the closet," said Glenn Magpantay, Executive Director of NQAPIA. "Our new Asian Family Acceptance Campaign will break this cycle of shame and suicide by helping API parents, many who are immigrants and bilingual, to open the door to unconditional love and acceptance for their LGBT children."

"It's such an honor to debut the Family is Still Family PSA Campaign especially at this crucial time in the LGBTQ movement," said Aries Liao, co-founder of Asian Pride Project. "We hope these videos not only honor the immense courage of family members speaking out about their love for their children, but raise awareness more broadly of the essential role that families - no matter how you define that - can play in nurturing acceptance within the Asian American community."

This effort was made possible with the generous support of the CJ Huang Foundation, Walter & Evelyn Haas, Jr. Fund, and Arcus Foundation. 

The National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) is a federation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander (AAI) organizations.  We seek to build the organizational capacity of local LGBT API groups, develop leadership, promote visibility, educate our community, enhance grassroots organizing, expand collaborations, and challenge anti-LGBT bias and racism.

Asian Pride Project (APP) is an lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) arts and advocacy group that promotes the acceptance of LGBTQ individuals in the API community through the power of storytelling and the arts.  APP's focus is on families, especially parents of LGBTQ individuals, since parents go through a coming out process too. APP creates visual art and media pieces (video, film and photography) as a catalyst for social change. All of APP's work is accessible through an online multilingual platform, providing access to resources regardless of geography.