Thirty-seven years is longer than many of you reading this have been around.
It’s also longer than even I remember actual gay men and actual lesbians actually floating the idea of actual same-sex marriage. And yet, thanks to Google and LIFE Magazine, it is, indeed, not some brand-new, perverse parody of hetero norms invented to vex the Chuck Norrises of the world and/or reveal the ugly bigotry of the religious right.
Almost two generations of Americans have been born since the photo, below, was taken. How many more before it’s a legal reality for all Americans?
From Google and LIFE Magazine‘s collaboration to bring some of the most significant photographs ever published to the interwebs:
Wedding cake adorned with homosexual couples to be used by activists to protest New York City clerk’s refusal to issue wedding licenses to homosexuals, 1971.
Location: US
Date taken: 1971
Photographer: Grey Villet
Size: 809 x 1280 pixels (11.2 x 17.8 inches)
Labels: Foods, Marriages, Bakery Goods, Homosexuality, Us, Sex, 1970s
3 comments
Because I am a nerd and because I used to have a lot more free time on my hands, I became enamored of the CBC Archives online (which is probably even stranger considering I’m an American and we’re allegedly not supposed to know much about you guys). I remember a nice couple from Manitoba who tried to seek a marriage license in the 1970s, interviewed by Barbara Frum (I wish I could ask her why her son is such an ass). I think the material is here.
The CBC had a special on homos about 1980-81. Besides the guy who said gays had special eyes that see in the dark and the guy who said he sat on broken glass to masturbate, there was a church wedding with two lesbians in white gowns.
That was about the time the Body Politic was telling us monogamy and marriage were outdated customs.
a cake with a lambda on it.
definitely Gay Activists Alliance.
how great is that?
i remember reading about that protest when i was in high school, thinking…someday i’m going to be doing that, and well, here i am again!