The Effectiveness of Kiss-Ins

What might seem like a good idea when your drinking with your mates,isnt going to improve the public perception of athiests.

If a demonstration of love and affection and acceptance makes people look down on atheists, I don’t WANT their approval.

He also misspelled “you’re” and “isn’t.” 😉

If the same kiss-in tactics were used during the civil rights movement (with mix-raced couples instead of same-sex couples) then I can guarantee you integrationism would have been even less popular than it was and would have faced more resistance than it did.

There’s an important difference between wanting to be provocative and wanting to be thought-provoking. Guess which this tactic is?

OK FULL disclosure here guys, before i realised i was Atheist, i felt uncomfortable seeing 2 men kiss. I am of course embarrassed to admit it & even after “coming out” Atheist i still felt it a little, but the more i’ve seen it the more i’ve become comfortable with it, to the extent that i only notice it as much as i do when Heterosexual couples do it. Long story short, keep it up, when it becomes as commonplace as a man & woman kissing even some homophobes may come to accept it. Of course the religious fundamentalists will always have a problem with it for a whole other bunch of reasons (or lack of it;-P).

 correction:
“reembling” should be “resembling”

I know this is satire, but I think it makes my point:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/gaypride-parade-sets-mainstream-acceptance-of-gays,351/

tl;dr: Instead of making gays and atheists seem normal, being provocative only makes the worst stereotypes seem true in the minds of conservatives AND moderates.

There are a lot of things that make me feel uncomfortable. Doesn’t make them worth banning or wrong, just not to my tastes. Problems come when people consider something to be wrong because it’s not to their tastes. Kinda like when Bill Clinton banned broccoli from the white house. Same thing.

I don’t think atheism has anything to do with being comfortable or not about seeing two men in a liplock. While it generally doesn’t bother me, I wouldn’t say I was 100% comfortable about seeing it and I’ve been an atheist for some time now. Anyway, my comfort has zero bearing on someone’s fundamental human rights, regardless of their orientation. More power to them and to us all!

That was George H.W. Bush.

One of the whole points of kiss-ins is that we’re talking about something that’s utterly uncontroversial and ubiquitous when done by straight people, an act that’s been celebrated in fine art, photojournalism, and cinema, and is a central part of American wedding rituals.

Back in the civil rights era, interracial kissing was similarly controversial. 

Wow, I had no idea that so many people who say they support gay rights and equality would find a simple kiss so threatening and divisive.

I think it’s rather awesome, myself.

 LOL Jean- Paul – that satire makes me laugh even as the flaming queen i am.

who gives a fuck about the conservatives and the moderates, when within the members of our own communities some including me  “second guess” simple gestures such as pushing some ones hair out of their eyes or touching them when they tell a funny with out having a projectile thrown at them

This reminds me that i am not alone, a not to fear showing my loved one how i feel no matter who is watching

controversy aside, frankly enough, i cant wait for the day that this is not even news.

Surely homophobes, racists, sexists – all forms of misanthropy and just plain old nuts fall into the category “atheist”.  After all, “atheist” only implies a non-belief in something completely unbelievable so it doesn’t take monumental mental capability.  

However – it usually proceeds someone opening their mind to challenge the social mores and with open minds all bad ideas are eventually considered and dispelled in time.  

That’s why if you find an “-ist” in the atheist camp, he/she is very probably evolving towards jettisoning that illegitimate concept as well.  I have “atheist” friends who believe in homeopathy (one told me I needed a Reiki treatment – he’s since stopped that nonsense) and a few anti-vaccine advocates.  It’s a process and few people are at exactly the same point in their journey from denial to acceptance.

Many theists who are members of those religions that happen to have hell as a doctrine, tend to claim “We’re just trying to warn you about hell; we want to save you from it because we care about you,” as if they didn’t actually *want* us to go there.

The impression I get from a mob chanting “burn in hell,” however, is exactly the opposite.  They like the idea all too well; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t say it like that.

This claimed compassion, this alleged desire to save us from cruel punishment, seems every bit as conditional, as the so-called love of the god who’s supposed to have instituted the punishment in the first place.

Real compassion is unconditional.

Although, it could just be that I’m an English major 🙂

How much of the “kiss-in” did the Pope actually see?  He probably was oblivious to the whole thing…guessing of course, but how much can he see in the pope-mobile anyhow, as he is being paraded about? 

I love it!  

Huh?  What possible evidence could you provide?

Exactly.   I’ve been told to get a room as a heterosexual for public displays of affection, but never been screamed at that I’m going to hell.    Where heterosexual kisses are appropriate (and they are not always appropriate) then homosexual kisses should be.     Hell, heterosexual men kiss men all the time in other cultures and it isn’t even considered a problem. 

 I’d say ease-of-reading. When we have rules of grammar that everyone adheres to, that makes communication easier.

Actually, I get the ick factor sometimes and it’s not because I was socialize to think it was wrong.   I used to get the ick factor seeing men kiss women when I was a kid, all the while being socialized to be taught it was right.   

If it was because I thought homosexual kissing was wrong but I don’t think it is wrong then why does it sometimes ick me out.    For example, it doesn’t ick me out if two girls kiss no matter what their orientation.   Nor does it ick me out if two attractive homosexual men kiss.   However if and ugly older homosexual  kisses a younger homosexual male that icks me out.  Also a heterosexual male kissing a homosexual male (in comedies where he is pretending to be homosexual) icks me out.  Whereas two french dudes kissing as a greeting doesn’t bother me.

Of course, I also get the ick factor if an old couple kisses sometimes, especially if I think tongue is involved.    🙂

It’s more complex than “socialized to believe it was wrong”.   It’s probably a whole lot of factors, from personality, to religion, to genetics, etc. 

Why thank you Mikey,ive been told off about 6 times now for my poor spelling.Im new to computers and my son isnt always around to ask,ive heard about spell check and im sure its in here somewhere.xxx

Thats my point, there are better ways than offending people,like reason and debate and positive expiriance

Men kissing in public is not wrong. 

 The whole point of the kiss-in is that a simple display of affection, which we see all the time from heterosexuals, shouldn’t be considered offensive. Sometimes people need to be offended, especially when they are offended by something as innocuous as a kiss.

Are you trying to say I’d never find mobs of Christians chanting at homosexuals about hell?  That Christians would never kill homosexuals?  That Christian nations have never persecuted or criminalised homosexuality?

Am I confusing christianity with islam?  I deliberately specified neither, and you’ll see why when you consider the following:

Both religions arguably have the same god, and certainly share prophets.  Both have a doctrine of hell.  Both have, at best, a neurotic and simultaneously obsessive yet dismissive attitude to women.  Both tend to be pretty hysterical and repressive about sexuality in general.  Both regard and treat homosexuals as practically subhuman.

Both, I am quite sure, have moderate, compassionate adherents who genuinely feel very bad about notions like nice people who happen to be gay or infidel being tortured for eternity, but who nevertheless have fully bought into the assertion that this is how things should and must be.

Both lack a shred of verifiable evidence.  Both hold belief in the absence of evidence to be a virtue.  Both ignore counterevidence.

Both hold absolutely no appeal for me.

 Sometimes even knowing your being stupid isn’t quite enough to defeat years of cultural & social pressure. Sometimes i still get that “What if i’m wrong & burn in Hell” thing, but then i stop, have a think & realise what’s happening & remind myself not to be so dumb!