Greg In Hollywood chats with LA Pride Person of the Year: US Congressman Mark Takano
He may be a United States congressman but Mark Takano is still new to the national political scene and therefore was not instantly recognizable to a lot of the people at LA Pride on Sunday.
But since I’ve written so much about his historic election as the first openly gay person of color to congress, I made a beeline over to him before the parade started.
He was eating a donut and drinking some coffee and before we took a photo together, I had to tell him: “You’ve got some crumbs on the corner of your lip!’
I would hope he would do the same for me!
I wanted to grab the photo first because I knew the parade was about to start but it turns out we had a few moments to chat so I took out my notepad (yep, still use them!) and we gabbed.
‘I’m thrilled to be here,’ he told me.
In addition to being the first openly gay person of color to be elected to the US Congress, he’s also the first openly gay person from California in Congress.
‘Those are my two monikers,’ he said with a chuckle.
A public school teacher for 23 years, the Japanese-American had twice before run unsuccessfully for congress in 1992 and 1994. He beat Republican candidate John Tavaglione last November in the race to represent California’s newly created 41st congressional district which covers Riverside, Moreno Valley, Perris and Jurupa Valley.
Takano noted that he was elected ‘not from San Francisco, not from West Hollywood’ but from historically Republican-leaning Riverside County which has become a bit left of center but still is a potential swing district.
‘That’s something for all communities to celebrate,’ Takano said of his unlikely success at the polls. ‘That’s a profound moment.’
The school teacher in Takano emerged when I asked what LA Pride meant to him: ‘In the wake of (the Stonewall) riots, instead of protests, (organizers) wanted a celebration. They wanted to celebrate the courage to be out and to be bold and to wake up and have the presence of self to say, ‘I’m not bad, I’m not evil. I’m a human being with the right to be very proud of who I am.’
Takano said that confidence is increasingly gaining respect as ‘straight people recognize us for who we are. We’ve done a remarkable job of transforming how people feel about us.’