Thursday, March 11, 2010

A Kiss Is Just A Kiss....Even If It Takes A Battle To Get One

My goodness, the Washington Post just stepped right into it.
What with Marriage Equality now officially the law of the land, or at least the District of Columbia, the Washington Post published a front page photo of two men kissing, and set off such a firestorm of controversy from wingnuts, dingbats, and asshats.
Oh my.
Let's take a look then, shall we, at some of the reader comments to the newspaper in the days following the man-on-man liplock:
Ann Witty wrote to say she was cancelling the subscription she'd held since the 1960s: “I am 65 years old and I realize that the world is changing rapidly – much more rapidly than I would like it to. While I realize that the Post must report on these changes – even the ones with which I do not agree – I feel that the picture on Thursday morning was an affront to the majority of your readership. It is not something that I want coming into my home. I believe that even your editors know that it would have been better placed in the Metro section and that it would have mitigated its impact to do so.”
So, she doesn't want to see happily married people on the front page of the paper? War is fine? Shootings? A-okay. Anger and rage, bring it on. Love? Not so much. Well, Ann, the times have changed, and you need to change with them, or simply dig back through your old Post archives and reread the news that you want to hear. The rest of us will be moving on.
Lee Miller of Columbia said:
“I would appreciate it if your cover pictures would not be so disturbing where my kids can see it easily on the kitchen table... please don’t shove this “Gay” business in our face. This is something that should have shown up on an inside page or two (without the picture).”
So, again, pictures of people in love might disturb your kids? i think it disturbs you, Lee, because you, sir, are a homophobe. And, for the record, "Gay" is not a business; it's not a lifestyle; it's an orientation just like straight.
And here are some more comments about The Front Page Kiss:
“the picture of two guys kissing makes me cringe.”
“Put it on page 10 or page four, put it in the paper, but I do not like it right there where I can’t avoid looking at it.”
The Washington Post is “promoting a faggot lifestyle.”
“That kind of stuff makes normal people want to throw up. People have kids who are being exposed to this crap. I will be glad when your rag goes out of business. Real men marry women.”
Actually, what makes me throw up is this kind of blatant homophobia that wants to take an innocuous picture of two people in love and turn it into pornography. And, for the record, with all the hoopla and hate and homophobia, the Post did not back down to these bigots, and, well, just twenty-seven cancellations came in.
So, for those of you in DC who don't want to see two men or two women, having just been married, kissing on the front page of the paper, let me remind you that in the 1960s when the Washington Post ran photos of interracial couples kissing after their suddenly legal weddings, many of you complained then.
And now it's no big deal.
We're here.
We're queer.
We're getting married in DC and kissing on the fron page of the paper.
Get used to it.

2 comments:

  1. Times are a changing, at times to slowly for most of us, but things are looking so much better! Twenty years from now children will wonder what all the noise was about when they read their history books about the fight for civil rights.

    PS the secret word is likey!! and I do likey this post! lol

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  2. Good post. Always interesting to hear what's going on over the pond. I love it when bigots show themselves for who they are.

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