Wearing a suit and tie and sporting a beard and a closely cropped haircut, Seth Marnin explained at an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) panel discussion that people are often startled to learn he was once a woman.

A transgender Jew, Marnin recalled confusing an acquaintance by referring to his bat mitzvah. The acquaintance, Marnin said, was sure that Marnin had meant to say bar mitzvah.

Of the four panelists, Marnin, ADL associate director of legal affairs, was one of two Jewish community members to participate in “Coming Out to Your Jewish/Black/Asian/Latino Family: Being LGBT and a Minority in Los Angeles,” held May 20 at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown and organized by the ADL’s Latino Jewish Roundtable and Asian Jewish Initiative. The other was Gamal Palmer, senior director of the Community Leadership Institute (CLI) at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, who said he is Jewish and Native American and identified as “non-hetero.” He said coming to terms with his religious identity has been as much a struggle as reconciling with his gender identity.

“My first coming-out story was that I’m now Jewish,” Palmer said during the panel, which attracted approximately 75 people.

When the event’s moderator, ADL

Regional Director Amanda Susskind, asked Palmer to elaborate on the “non-hetero” label, Palmer said that he describes himself as such to prevent people from putting him in a box.

The other participants were Eileen Ma, who hails from a Pacific Islander family and is executive director of Asians and Pacific Islanders for LGBT Equality, and actor and Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation national spokesperson Wilson Cruz, who is Latino.

The panel began with each of the speakers sharing his or her personal stories about coming out to their loved ones and coming to terms with who they are.

Marnin said he had been concerned about how being transgender would affect how people in the workplace — he was working at an employment law firm at the time of his transitioning — would treat him. All went smoothly, he said, but he added that some, including members of the Jewish community, have not always been receptive to those transitioning from male to female and vice versa.

“I have friends who were essentially thrown out of their Jewish community after transitioning,” he said.

Cruz, for his part, said his most difficult challenge was coming out to his Latino father. He said he told his father he was gay during a Christmas gathering — the family was based in a Puerto Rican and Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. — and that his father then threw him out of the house. Cruz lived in his car and with friends before he was able to get his life together. It was only when his father saw Cruz on television as a gay character in an episode of “My So-Called Life” — in which a gay teen is kicked out of his family’s house — that the two eventually came to understand one another, Cruz said.

The event closed with Susskind asking the panelists to discuss what it is like to deal both with being an ethnic and/or religious minority and with identifying as LGBT. Has “double bigotry” given the panelists “double empathy”? Susskind asked. The answer appeared to be “yes,” the panelists listening to each other attentively as they shared the hardships they’ve faced over the years.

Before the panelists took the stage, the ADL treated the crowd to a screening of several clips from the award-winning comedy-drama “Transparent.” The Amazon TV show follows a Jewish father whose transitioning from male to female shakes up the dynamic of his family. Wilshire Boulevard Temple Rabbi Susan Goldberg, who offered brief remarks during the event, served as an adviser on the show.

The success of “Transparent” is reflective of a larger trend that sees transgender issues occupying an increasingly important place in the public realm. The ADL is known for its work combating anti-Semitism, but the organization, which has offices all over the country, is focused on civil rights for all, including people from the LGBT community, Susskind said during opening remarks.

Susskind said conversations such as the ones that took place at Wilshire Boulevard Temple provide important insights into the lives of LGBT people and that she has learned that “coming out is not a moment. It’s a process. Sometimes it’s a lifetime.”