#2: John Park

John Park* spoke with me about internalized racism among young Asian Americans in Orange County and his experience as a Catholic Korean American youth minister. Here's his story.


I broke out our dialogue below because there are subjects that may be difficult for sensitive listeners. Please air as appropriate. I find it particularly useful to note when my truth is so fixed as to feel solid; the security of solidified truth is false, a red flag marking where the heart is blocked.

First part:

There's a moment when I thought John misspoke by calling himself pro-choice, but later he asserted public law should not be an arm of religious rules. We certainly found common ground, but there were some points that remained murky to me.

One of the views I can't "un-see" is the constructed nature of gender and norms, especially how they are pegged to reproduction. We are millennia advanced beyond the valuation of human beings based on the gametes we produce and yet our bodies are daily made currency and debt for misogyny. John admits his insistence on the possibility of pregnancy (as well as a loving relationship) for permissible sex doesn't take this into consideration. When we try to protect something, we risk all. I think it's interesting that the risk the church chooses is on the side of harming ourselves through gender-based constraints, while I have chosen to risk harm on the side of exploring and finding out for myself. I obviously find the latter approach more consonant with the nature of science and learning. I admit that in the course of finding out for myself, I have harmed myself and others. I can assure you my effort to stop harming is, as a direct consequence, all the more fervent. Were I not allowed to find out for myself, I cannot say how sure my steps would be on this path.

I relate my experience of a deplorably common form of rape here. I was struck, in this exchange as well as in my interrogation of what John's church does to prevent sexual misconduct by its clergy and members, by John's mostly procedural response. The first times I heard my friends' stories of being sexually assaulted in college, I did not know what to think or how to respond; with more experience and the publicizing of #MeToo stories I am getting better at bringing forth my love for those harmed and immediate condemnation of sexually violent and exploitative behavior. Let's also share how we offer and want to be offered support for survivors.

Second part:


We both left the interview wanting to continue the conversation, and I hope to encourage you to engage sincerely with those in your life whose values and norms threaten our well-being. The fate of this democracy depends on it.

*This is not his real name.