Video / Art Project by Scott Terry. He writes:
When the religious right campaigned to repeal the right of California gays and
lesbians to marry, I was silent. It’s not that I didn’t care or was uninterested…I
just didn’t care enough to get involved. I don’t ever see myself getting
married, so I did not join the fight.That was a mistake.
So while I did not voice my opinions or feel alarmed at the potential for
California voters to feel strongly enough about gay marriage to amend the
state constitution, I do have a really short fuse when people take their
religious dogma out of their respective churches and expect everyone else to
adopt it. I get even more impatient with the “it’s the way it’s always been”
argument. I mean, get real. If we lived by the way it’s always been, we’d still
believe in slavery and child labor.This art piece is my late entry into the argument and an apology for my earlier
silence.On December 5th, 2008 when I first envisioned the creation of this piece, I
sent an email to the ProtectMarriage group, inquiring where I might obtain
some YesOn8 lawn signs. Here’s the text of that email:Me: “Hi. I need some YesOn8 lawn signs. Can you tell me where I could get
them?”The ProtectMarriage folks reply: “Your best option would be visiting your
local church. They might have some leftover from the campaign.”Powerful message, I think.
♦◊♦
“Art is not made to decorate apartments.
It’s an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”
– Pablo Picasso
If you haven’t read it already, I recommend the work of a scholar named Boswell, who went deep into the historical archives and discovered that the Catholic Church in the medieval period actually had established rituals for same-sex unions, and these unions carried at least some limited legal standing within the Church itself. If people burning witches could handle it, I figure we can, too.
Yeah I guess those witch burners were just ahead of their time. 😉
I’m a Californian living in the UK, and throughout the Prop 8 fiasco I was following it via the internet, but mostly I wasn’t worried. I also didn’t get involved (even by donating money) but mostly it was because I didn’t think it’d be that big of a problem. This wasn’t 2004…it was 2008! We already had marriage equality in California, and a few nutcases were going to fail at taking it away. Little did I freaking know… A couple of things happened that finally woke me up – first I read about some retired couple donating their entire life… Read more »
Hi Heather…glad you liked the piece….I’m in the bay area, via Chico/Montana/Redding/Utah/Wyoming/SCal….it’s a long story…LOL
Coolio…yeah sounds like a long story. I’m from the Central Coast (i.e. a pit stop along 101. lol). I love the bay area.