Riverdalians proudly participate in Asia's largest Gay Pride Parade

Editor's note: This story, published online Dec. 11, 2025, was updated to correct several spelling and punctuation errors. 

On a humid, gray October morning in Taiwan’s Capital of Taipei, a group of Riverdalians reunited in a chance encounter halfway across the world. The streets shimmered with neon fabric, flashy sequins and bold flags flapping in the wind as Asia’s largest Pride parade came to life around them.

This year marked the first time the Taiwan Counseling Association walked the parade, with the Bronxites joining the members of the organization on the route. For Dr. Stuart Chen-Hayes, Lehman College Professor of Counselor Education: School and Clinical Mental Health Counseling, the moment unfolded at the end of a month-long sabbatical teaching sexuality, gender and family counseling in Taiwanese Universities. But his connection to the island runs far deeper than academia.

Two decades ago, Taiwan became the backdrop to a landmark moment in his own LGBTQ family history, when his then-partner, a Taiwanese citizen, welcomed their son, making the child the first in Taiwan to have two fathers listed on both a birth certificate and a marriage license.

Chen-Hayes' most recent trip had included lectures, research meetings and the teaching of his memoir about that journey, "Double Dads One Teen: A Queer Family's Trailblazing Life in the USA and Taiwan," but the pride parade, and the opportunity to walk in it, he said, felt like the culmination of it all.

Marching beside him in the parade was his partner of 2 years, Sosimo Aparis, visiting Taiwan for the first time. Taipei Pride, Aparis recalled, much like New York’s, spilled from sidewalks into streets with spectators quickly becoming participants and rows of public-health and LGBTQ resource booths throughout, a vivid reminder of Taiwan’s growing role as a regional refuge for queer and trans communities.

The two were supposed to march with the Taiwan Counseling Association, but locating the official staging area proved more difficult than expected. Following crowds rather than maps, they drifted toward the beating center of the procession carried forward by the tide of marchers and the dense crush of spectators.

There, they ran into a familiar face – Dr. Jack Simons, an associate professor at Mercy University and a fellow Riverdale resident, who had also flown to Taiwan for work tied to LGBTQ advocacy. A longtime colleague of Chen-Hayes, Simons was in Taipei collaborating on the Transgender Resilience Project, a multi-country study focused on documenting the strengths, joy and survival strategies of transgender people.

The reunion, he later said, felt like “synchronicity,” a word he prefers to coincide.

Chen-Hayes had long been a guiding figure in his academic trajectory, especially in pushing counselor-education programs to center LGBTQ students and families. Seeing his colleague and Sosimo in the largest queer gathering in Asia reinforced both men’s work in a way that felt intimate and expansive at once.

As the Lehman professor reminisced on walking the procession together, he noted the significance of its location, with Taipei being one of the most important LGBTQ hubs in the region, especially after legalizing same-sex marriage in 2019. Pride attracts queer and trans people from across East and Southeast Asia, many from countries where public marches remain prohibited. For Simon, witnessing that mattered. He described Taiwan as “a beacon,” a place where people come not just to celebrate but to breathe — freely, safely, openly.

The three Riverdalians walked for more than an hour, weaving through advocacy tents, drummers, families, students and activists from across the globe. At one point, a float passed, leaving a brief gap in the procession. Instead of waiting, the spectators surged forward, filling the empty space in seconds. It was, in Chen-Hayes’ words, a moment that captured the day’s spirit: “If you’re in, you’re gonna be in.”

By late afternoon, the three paused beneath the slanted tiers of Taipei 101, the city’s iconic 101-story skyscraper. They took a photo together — a Bronx couple, a longtime colleague and their shared decades of LGBTQ work all converging unexpectedly in a city that has become a symbol of queer possibility in Asia.