Sexy Politics: David Badash on 'The Great Nationwide Kiss-In' planned for August 15

The Great Nationwide Kiss-In: Fight for your right to smooch

The Great Nationwide Kiss-In is a protest event scheduled for 2:00pm EDT on August 15, in response to recent incidents in San Antonio, TX, El Paso, TX and Salt Lake City, UT involving gay and lesbian couples who were harassed or detained by law enforcement or other people for the simple act of kissing in a public place.

I'll be reporting more about (and participating in) The Great Nationwide Kiss-In as its August 15 date gets closer and I urge all of my readers – regardless of sexual orientation – to join in, but for the moment I want to take this opportunity to repost, in full, something the event's co-founder David Badash wrote today for TheNewCivilRightsMovement.com, as well as the first video promoting the event. It's a message that I believe should be spread far and wide:

Why The Kiss-In Is So Important

I got an email from a reporter last week. Lovely woman. Her name is Becky Bruce and she works for Salt Lake City’s WKSL radio. We arranged a telephone interview and she asked me a few questions about the Kiss-In. She recorded it and told me the story would air today. It did.

Perhaps ignorantly, I assumed there would be support from some folks in Salt Lake City for the Kiss-In. Becky was sweet. She did a fair story. But the comments on the story she wrote? Wow. Scary. Not all of them, but the vast majority. It’s no wonder a same-sex couple was arrested for kissing in Salt Lake City.

The comments, all 300+ in just a few hours, reminded me today of why we’re doing the Kiss-In in the first place. We’re fighting homophobia. I don’t think that goal actually crept into my head until recently. When I created The Great Nationwide Kiss-In!, it was just to take action, to try to get people to see that gay or straight, “a kiss is just a kiss.” And that, gay or straight, it wouldn’t matter, if folks could just see us as “normal” folks, like themselves.

I still believe that. But now, I realize, there’s more at stake for us. There’s a larger goal, a larger statement we are making: We’re saying it’s OK to be who you are, and we’re saying we don’t have to hide, and we’re saying, affirming, that gay or straight, everyone has the same rights.

Do me, and yourself a favor. Take a look at some of the comments coming from of Salt Lake City’s WKSL’s listeners and readers. See the blatent, unabashed, unbridled hatred and homophobia. And then, hold on to that feeling, and get in touch with everyone you know. Tell them what you learned. Get them to be a part of The Great Nationwide Kiss-In! You’ll have done something wonderful. You’ll have taken aim against homophobia. You’ll have strengthened the cause for equality, and for love. And you’ll have done all this, by sharing the knowledge that, yes, a kiss is just a kiss.

How’s it going? Well, in a word, amazing! In just two weeks we’ve got Kiss-Ins planned in way more than two dozen cities. Big cities, medium cities, small cities. East Coast, West Coast, the South, the North. Every day we get folks asking if they can hold a Kiss-In in their town. We hope you’re one of those folks!

Please, if you haven’t already, visit us at GreatNationwideKissIn.com. Sign up. Volunteer. Help us out. We really need you. And you know what? Maybe, just maybe, you need us too.

In addition to joining The Great Nationwide Kiss-In, please also consider clicking over and sending some love to help to counter-balance some of the hateful comments Mr. Badash, Ms. Bruce, KSL.com, and gays and lesbians and equal rights supporters across the country are getting this week. Here's the link: KSL.com: SLC one of many cities signing on for national kiss-in