Members of the public attending this year’s Pride Parade on Sunday will have the opportunity to be featured in a new exhibit honoring gains in marriage equality and sports equality over this past year. Participants only have to do one thing: kiss.
As the first openly gay man to be drafted into the NFL, American football defensive end Michael Sam proved earlier this year how powerful a single kiss can be. His simple act of kissing his boyfriend out of sheer joy after being drafted by the St. Louis Rams made world headlines due to subsequent complaints to the FCC following the kiss. One viewer wrote, “This is harmful to children, and is also obscene and disgusting, and should not be shown on daytime television.”
To counter such homophobia, the exhibit “Pride: Power in a Kiss” will be created along the SF Pride Parade route. The SF Bay Times has assembled a team of noted LGBT photographers who will capture images of parade goers kissing and who agree to participate. The images will be featured both in the paper and in the exhibit, which will go on display in the Castro during the coming weeks.
The project launches with the cover of our latest issue, which shows Marriage Equality USA movement leaders and SF Bay Times columnists Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis. Their kiss is a celebration of the one-year anniversary of the June 28, 2013, ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, lifting its stay on an injunction that ordered state officials to stop enforcing Proposition 8. Within hours, LGBT couples who were plaintiffs in the case fighting Prop 8 had wed. Gaffney and Lewis themselves are now married, and have been together for nearly three decades.
The SF Bay Times, the oldest fully LGBT owned and funded paper for our community in Northern California, is honored to participate in the San Francisco Pride Parade, which this year falls on the 238th birthday of the City of San Francisco. On June 29, 1776, just a few days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Spaniards celebrated their first mass here under a temporary shelter at the site of the future Mission Dolores. The moment is recognized as giving birth to what was later to become the City of San Francisco. Mission Dolores, completed in 1791, is San Francisco’s oldest building.
Last year’s Pride Community Grand Marshal and SF Bay Times co-publisher Dr. Betty Sullivan will be in the SF Bay Times parade contingent, joined by LGBT athletes, newspaper contributors, sponsors and other supporters. We invite you to join us on Sunday, to kiss for pride and to celebrate our right to do so, remembering that this simple and peaceful act is considered a crime in many other places around the world.
The SF Bay Times wishes to give special thanks to Gray Line of San Francisco, Classic Cable Car & Ride The Ducks, Honda of Oakland, Napa Cellars, Extreme Pizza, Sweet Inspiration, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for helping to make the exhibit and this year’s Pride celebration possible.
Recent Comments