Showing posts with label Soho kiss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soho kiss. Show all posts

Monday, 18 April 2011

The Guardian: Letter Of The Week

Your report on the gay protest outside the John Snow pub in Soho says organisers "urged same-sex individuals to engage in kissing" (No kissing here: pub in homophobia row closes in vain bid to thwart gay protest, 16 April). What precisely is a "same-sex individual"?

Simon Edge

London

The Guardian.

• "To show our support for gay kissing in public we present a Celebration of Gay Kisses especially for you to enjoy. Videos from YouTube featuring clips from As The World Turns, Hollyoaks, Torchwood, Queer as Folk, Oz and Dante's Cove" - ATV Today.

Saturday, 16 April 2011

Kissinggate: Get A Room!

Most of the papers wrote ecstactic coverage about last night's kiss-in at The John Snow pub in Soho - even The Daily Mail applauded the "mass smooch".
Though there is some debate about exactly how far Jonathan Williams and James Bull went - they say the were just kissing on the lips.
And no paper gave the protest the official seal-of-approval of devoting a leader column to it.
The Guardian started a live blog that was so over-excited I kept wondering if it was taking the piss.
And the live blog then shut up shop at 5pm, two hours before the kiss-in started.
The BBC News website even went to the trouble of finding a pub landlord in Barnsley who said he would have thrown the men out - bizarre.
Several gay men I know began to confess being distinctly underwhelmed - one quipped that the protest outside the John Snow looked like any other Friday night in Soho.
Another said that as word of the kiss-in was publicised on Twitter it should be called "Twactivism".
Or was it "Twativisim"?
A sole dissenting voice in the papers was The Independent's gayer Philip Hensher who annnounced snootily; 'Kissing in public is not a universal right'.
Well, it's so terribly vulgar, isn't it Mr Hensher?

• An amusing video of a contretemps between Paul Shetler, who organised the protest, and some Trots. Paul was pretty cool on BBC Breakfast. Brava!