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Tet parade: Westminster told not to pick sides in gay rights dispute

Protesters lined the Tet parade route earlier this year after members of a gay rights group were banned from marching.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Westminster council members have been advised not to pick sides in what has become a growing dispute over whether a gay rights group should be allowed to march in a lunar new year’s parade in the nation’s largest Vietnamese American community.

But at least one elected official in Westminster said he believes members of Viet Rainbow should be included in the annual Tet parade.

“I’m asking for inclusion -- and peace,” Councilman Sergio Contreras said. “We all will be celebrating a community holiday, and the parade has been a part of that for many, many years. We all want everyone to be welcomed.”

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The city’s lawyers, however, have advised council members to stay out of the parade debate because it is a privately funded event. The city does issue organizers a permit to stage the celebration, but it is considered a procedural matter.

Council members in the small Orange County city will meet Wednesday night and members of Viet Rainbow have vowed to ask the city to block organizers from staging the parade.

“If my 97-year-old grandmother can accept me for who I am, why should some parade organizers get to make me feel like I’m not good enough to march?” one member wrote on the group’s website.

Parade organizers barred LGBT individuals from marching in the 2013 event and last month voted again to ban them from the parade, scheduled for February. Shunned by one of the community’s signature events, many of the gay rights activists had stood along the 2013 parade route to protest their ouster.

The showdown Wednesday at the Westminster council meeting could be a test of wills in an immigrant community that has been slow to recognize gay rights.

“If the city decides to grant the permit letting the event happen, we’ll ask city officials not to be in the parade and join us at the parade site in solidarity,” said Hieu Nguyen, a founder of Viet Rainbow.

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But leaders in Little Saigon, which stretches across central Orange County and is the largest Vietnamese American community in the nation, said that some immigrants are not ready to welcome LGBT men and women and do not see gay rights as being on par with such things as freedom of speech.

The Vietnamese American Federation of Southern California, which organizes the parade, has not commented on the parade controversy. But some of its members are religious conservatives who in the past have refused to budge when it comes to acceptance of gay rights. In November, the group voted 47 to 21 against LGBT participation.

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anh.do@latimes.com

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