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| Laura Douglas-Brown is editor of Southern Voice. She can be reached at lbrown@sovo.com |
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HOME > VIEWPOINT > EDITORIAL
By: LAURA DOUGLAS-BROWN
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Ten years ago next week, my best friend and I were hurtling down a South Georgia highway, gorging ourselves on garish pink cupcakes, on the way to the beach to celebrate our newly invented favorite holiday: Anti-Valentine’s Day.
We had both ended long-term relationships, and wanted to be as far away as possible from the doily-decorated disgustingness of our coupled friends. So we decided to keep the one thing we liked about Valentine’s Day — the unbridled consumption of sweets — and dump the rest.
Our hopes of balancing our sugar intake with walks on the beach were spoiled by rain, but that just seemed to fit the mood of the holiday. Housebound, we had nothing better to do than drink beer, eat chocolates, and sing along to our inaugural Anti-Valentine’s mix tape, a collection of bitter-girl anthems like Ani Difranco’s “Untouchable Face.”
Little did I know, I wouldn’t linger long in the single world, as I met my life partner just a few months later. By the next February, our relationship was far enough along that I invited her to join the second-annual Anti-Valentine’s Day trip, and was relieved to see that she disliked the holiday it spoofed as much as I did.
PERHAPS MY PROBLEM IS THAT there may be no other holiday as potentially gay — but not actually gay — as Valentine’s Day.
The same year my friend and I created Anti-Valentine’s Day, national gay activists founded Freedom to Marry Week, celebrated this year from Feb. 11-17. Designed to coincide with Valentine’s Day, the week is marked by gay couples applying for marriage licenses at government offices, then using the inevitable denials to call attention to marriage inequality, as well as holding forums, rallies and other special events.
Now celebrating its 10th year, Freedom to Marry Week never caught on in Georgia, although activists here held a moving Valentine’s Day rally on the steps of the State Capitol in 2004, as the state legislature debated an ultimately successful constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
No events are planned in Georgia this year, according to the websites of the Freedom to Marry Coalition and Don’t Amend, the two groups that sponsor the week.
Given how distant the fight for gay marriage feels from the political reality of Georgia, that’s understandable. But as people singled out by society for how we love, a day that celebrates couples could be a venue for us to make powerful public statements about the validity of our unions.
If, like me, you find it hard to embrace the gay potential for Valentine’s Day when you are submersed in the Hallmark-card heterosexual sentimentality that envelopes it, take a look at the Valentine’s stories submitted by Southern Voice readers, starting on page 25.
They’re proof-positive that our relationships deserve celebration, too — and not just on one special day of the year.
Unfortunately, the days leading up to Freedom to Marry Week haven’t exactly been filled with good news for gay couples.
We should all send heartfelt Anti-Valentine’s Day wishes to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who last week held a press conference to admit he had an affair with the wife of his campaign manager. Newsom was himself in the midst of a divorce at the time of the fling.
“I am deeply sorry and am accountable for what has occurred and have now begun the process of reconciling it and will be working aggressively to advance our agenda in the city,’’ Newsom told reporters Feb. 1.
Newsom’s admission doesn’t help our agenda either.
The young mayor of the nation’s gayest city made headlines worldwide five weeks after he took office in 2004, when he ordered the city to begin granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. More than 3,000 gay couples wed before courts forced the city to stop performing the marriages.
The California Supreme Court later ruled the weddings invalid, but the images of hundreds of gay and lesbian couples lining up on the steps of City Hall each day, greeted by flowers and cards sent from supporters around the world, remain a poignant testimony in the fight for marriage equality.
That’s what makes Newsom’s admission so disappointing. Like former President Bill Clinton and former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, Newsom was a straight ally with enormous influence. These men’s willingness to speak out for us, from their respective political bully ...
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