- from the LUSH website
This sounds like fun: Show up at Crabtree Valley Mall Saturday morning and, at 11:38, proceed to kiss. Best to bring a partner. (I don’t know that eligible kiss-ee’s will be hanging around. Maybe.) Your partner’s gender is, of course, up to you. Why wouldn’t it be?
Has it really been eight months since we last visited the non-issue issue of gay couples smootching at a mall? Last October, it was at Cameron Village and we were pleased to learn that CV is cool with it. This time, the kiss-in is at Crabtree Valley Mall, it’s planned in advance, it’s a definite publicity stunt, but then, try to draw that line … publicity stunts are in the eye of the beholder … anyway, y’all are invited to kiss up in front of the LUSH cosmetics store at 11:38 a.m.
Why 11:38? LUSH is glad you asked. It’s because, according to their count, 1,138 civil rights that attach to marriage in this country are denied to gay folks via the so-called Defense of Marriage (DOMA) acts (federal and state).
Thus, LUSH is ramping up a a Freedom to Marry campaign to combat the forces of DOMA, and not a bit too soon. The DOMA forces in North Carolina, not content with a discriminatory law (and no doubt worried that a state court will someday rule that a discriminatory law is, well, discriminatory), are fixing to write DOMA into the state constitution by referendum in November, 2012. That is, if the voters go along with it.
But if enough people start kissing and telling …
As at CV, I’d say decorum should prevail tomorrow. So, in other words, none of this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/arts/design/01tino.html
—>
Although … never mind.
Per LUSH, you’re supposed to do this:
NATIONWIDE KISS AND TELL TO WIN MARRIAGE
FOR SAME-SEX COUPLESSaturday, June 18th
WHO: LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics
WHAT: Gay and straight couples in Raleigh will pucker up for a purpose
on June 18th as part of a nationwide ŒKiss and Tell¹ protest at LUSH
Cosmetics. LUSH is inviting the public and their pouts down to their
stores to kiss in support of marriage for same-sex couples and sign
postcards telling the federal government to end the ongoing
discrimination against tens of thousands of couples and families across
America.The nationwide ŒKiss and Tell¹ will be taking place at LUSH stores at
exactly 11:38 a.m. to signify the number of protections, responsibilities
and rights that are currently denied to same-sex couples and their
families under the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
WHERE: Outside LUSH Cosmetics, Crabtree Valley MallWHEN: Saturday, June 18th 11:38 a.m. sharp
WHY: Exclusion from the freedom to marry unfairly punishes committed
same-sex couples and their families by depriving them of critical
support, security, and obligations in virtually every area of life,
including death and taxes. Under DOMA, same-sex couples are excluded from
1,138 rights tied to marriage because the federal government does not
recognize their marriages. The denial of marriage is one of the harshest
inequalities inflicted on lesbian and gay Americans and their families,
and it¹s a discrimination enacted by our own government.
