More Gay Kissing
A new campaign, HeartGoesPop, is trying to conquer the stigma attached to gay kissing in public. It’s not about sex. It’s about emotion and showing the same affection straight couples show. Whether it’s a peck on the cheek or a peck on the lips, there’s still a certain amount of shock attached to gay people kissing or showing any kind of affection in public. And I would have to admit that even I don’t feel comfortable showing too much affection in public with my husband of twenty-one years.
It’s not just because we’ve never been the type of couple that felt the need to hold hands or become overly affectionate in public. I think most straight couples who have gone the distance would agree with me on this. We’ve known gay couples who did that and they never lasted very long. We really don’t like that kind of thing and we’ve always found that couples who do that (gay or straight) are often overcompensating for something lacking within their own relationship…as if they have/need to prove something to the world. With the HeartGoesPop campaign I’m talking about that uncomfortable feeling of being in public and not surrounded by only gay people. It’s hard to get around sometimes because we’ve all been conditioned to hold back our affections to please everyone else.
“Through each photo and story featured on HeartGoesPop.com, we also hope to inspire more LGBT couples to publicly #KissProudly,” organizers for the campaign said in a statement. “Many of us in the LGBT community have felt uncomfortable showing affection in public for fear that a simple kiss may be met with resistance by those around us. With all the problems we face in this world, shouldn’t all kisses be celebrated? We think so. Here’s to bringing more love into the world — one sweet kiss at a time.”
You can read more about it here.
I think it’s a great idea. This is about learning to show affection in public in a normal way in spite of how some might react. I’m sure there are a lot of straight couples out there who find it hard to show affection in public. But the difference is that if they did show affection in public no one would think twice. When gay couples do that it’s a different thing altogether.
Gay Muslims
I don’t know much about this at all, so I find it fascinating. Like gays in most other religions, gay Muslims also find themselves at odds with everything they’ve ever known.
“Muslims around the world are saying, ‘You know what? My relationship with Islam doesn’t have to be guilt-ridden,’” said Toronto native Samra Habib, the photographer behind “Just Me and Allah.”
“In most Muslim communities, most LGBT people are not open, and that’s living without dignity,” said El-Farouk Khaki, a Toronto immigration lawyer and one of the subjects in the photos. “Breaking the invisibility is important.”
There’s a photo exhibit in Toronto on June 18th at the public library called, Just Me and Allah, where gay Muslims are coming out…or I guess speaking out. You can read more here. It’s interesting to read how deeply these emotions run. The photos are excellent, too.
I have a feeling this is something we’ll be hearing a lot more about.
Transgender Woman Complains
After spending the evening in a Washington, DC hookah bar, a transgender woman filed a complaint because of the way she and her gay friends were treated.
In August 2013, Amira Gray visited Bistro 18 with eight friends, including four women and two gay men, according to legal documents posted on Lambda Legal, an LBGT legal nonprofit organization. In the complaint, Gray says she and her friends were ignored by the waitstaff the entire night (except for when an employee brought over a hookah machine) and had to go to the bar to place their orders.
But there’s more.
When they got their bill it said: “Gay Bitches.”
For those who think that everything is getting so much better for gays, think again. This kind of thing happens all the time and most of the time goes unreported.