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Tuan Williams and James Moore arrive at the Lakewood/Ft. McPherson MARTA station after spending Sunday afternoon in Piedmont Park. (Photo by Ryan Lee)
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While Brown v. Board of Education and Rosa Parks were indispensable elements of the Civil Rights Movement, widespread social change came about largely due to the unheralded actions of everyday African Americans. Likewise, advances in the acceptance of gay men and lesbians are often marked by scenes as underground as the MARTA subway.
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: RYAN LEE
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Editors’ note: This week, Southern Voice begins a two-part series using Atlanta’s public transit system to explore the visibility and experiences of lesbian and gay people throughout the city.
It was a fairly typical rush hour at the Arts Center MARTA station last Friday evening, aside from the presence of what some consider a blue moon.
A gate attendant displayed fierce resolve in tracking down a high school student who avoided paying a fare by sneaking through the entry gate behind his friend.
“Young man! Young man!” the attendant called out at least six times before the teenager could ignore her no longer.
Downstairs on the train platform, a homeless woman stood — or dreamily hovered — in front of the escalator exit, oblivious to the many people who tried to squeeze by her without contact, and the many more whose eyes were transfixed on her tragedy.
The dozens of people awaiting a train at the Arts Center station included Midtown workers ready to start their weekend, travelers heading to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to catch a flight and Atlanta Braves fans on their way to see the team lose to the San Francisco Giants. A typical crowd on a typical summer evening in Atlanta, awaiting a routine train ride.
Also a part of this standard MARTA crowd were two young women engaged in nondescript conversation. One of the women — wearing high-rising jean shorts and a white blouse, with orange and red highlights in her braided hair — sat on the arm of a concrete bench. Her friend, who sported short dreadlocks, an oversized orange T-shirt and baggy brown shorts — stood in front of her.
A southbound train approached the Arts Center station and the woman with orange and red highlights stood beside her friend on the platform. As the two of them waited for the train door to open, they clasped each other’s hand, making the upcoming ride decidedly less routine than what some MARTA passengers were used to.
Seated beside each other on the crowded train, the woman in the oversized T-shirt extended her left arm so that it rested across her girlfriend’s shoulder. Directly across the aisle from the two women, a heterosexual couple on their way to Turner Field was in an identical pose.
Behind that couple sat another man and woman on their way to the ballgame, already inebriated and blabbering about an obnoxious variety of topics including acid-washed jeans and vampires. The couple was easily making the most noise on the train, but even their rowdy behavior didn’t seem as loud and distracting as the two young women’s quiet embrace.
Most of the people on the train, zoned out into their personal world, didn’t notice when the woman with orange and red highlights rested her head on her girlfriend’s shoulder. But the young lesbian couple captivated a handful of passengers, like Mark Young who was on his way home to Austell after work.
A self-identified Christian man, Young watched the two women for most of the 15-minute train ride to Five Points, discomforted by what he considered glorified sinning; but he was also aware that it’s no longer as fashionable to express such views about homosexuality in public as it once was.
“But it’s like, you see more, and more and more, of it, and it’s like, it’s supposed to be normal, but in actuality, morality wise, it’s not normal,” Young, 35, said in an interview after exiting the train.
“The first time you,” Young said with a pause, choosing his words carefully. “Like, say, if those two ladies, if I would’ve went up to them and said, ‘Look, I would like to talk to you ladies about Christ,’ then they’ll feel like their civil liberties or civil rights have been violated if somebody looks at them in a different way.
“People say live and let live, and some people think that homosexuality is normal,” he continued. “But it’s not normal for a human and an animal to sleep together, or it’s not normal for an adult and a child; but two of the same kind, it should not be normal as well — that’s just my personal opinion.”
On her way to her job as a waitress at a downtown restaurant, Melissa Duncan didn’t stare at the lesbian couple as intensely as Young did, but she periodically looked in their direction, at one point rolling her eyes as she looked away.
“I didn’t mean to roll my eyes, but I guess it was a bit much,” Duncan, 27, said in a telephone interview the next day. “They just ...
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