The Great Nationwide Kiss-In!
San Antonio. El Paso. Salt Lake City. Three cities. Three same-sex couples. All harassed and detained or arrested – for kissing.
You heard the stories. You read the news. You had to have asked yourself, when will it stop? When will I be able to walk down the street of my hometown, holding my better-half’s hand? When will I be able to give my loved-one a kiss – on the cheek, on the lips, without fear of intimidation – or incarceration?
Three weeks ago, after these incidents, I called for a nationwide kiss-in, in the hope that we could reach all those people we keep talking about – people who know of us but don’t know us. And then I reached out to a few friends – Willow Witte, co-founder of the grassroots LGBT group Join The Impact, and David Mailloux, who writes DYM-SUM. We took the idea of a nationwide kiss-in, and crafted it into The Great Nationwide Kiss-In.
As of today, just three weeks after I wrote, “It’s Time For A Nationwide Kiss-In!,” The Great Nationwide Kiss-In has events planned in 50 cities. Thousands of people have joined our movement. Gay people. Straight people. Bisexual people. Transgender people. Young and old alike. In big cities, in small towns. The stories are heartwarming.
We have a few cities where high school students, without fear of their conservative, southern neighbors whose beliefs might discourage those less-courageous, wrote to us and asked us if they could organize a kiss-in in their town. Just a few days ago, we received an email from a man in Saipan. Yes, I asked the same question: Saipan? Saipan, he tells us, is a U.S. Territory, north of Guam. He writes,
“The local LGBT community is not as visible as I believe it should be. This would give us an opportunity to let our voices be heard, to highlight our presence in this community, and to give us a political edge which we did not have before. While there is increasing acceptance of lesbians and gays here, we remain a marginal part of the wider community, and a there remains a level of shame associated with being LGBT. Most important, I want my local LGBT sisters and brothers to engage with the national and international discourse about civil and human rights. I believe this event would show our determination to stand in solidarity with our LGBT sisters and brothers in the U.S., and indeed, around the world.”
Literally all over America, and in a few cities in Canada, on Saturday, August 15, at 2 PM EDT, people of every orientation, gender, and race, will gather with their partners, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, better-halves and loved ones, and at the top of the hour, kiss.
What could be more powerful, what could send a stronger message, than these brave and beautiful souls, standing up for their inalienable right to perform the most basic and beautiful of human acts, sharing a kiss? A kiss that straight couples don’t even give a second thought to as they exchange that simple expression of affection, at a train station, doctor’s office, department store, restaurant, movie theater, or football game.
I think of the people in Boston, in Phildelphia, in Chicago, and L.A., and I’m grateful they are working so hard to make The Great Nationwide Kiss-In a success. But then I think about those kids about to enter their senior year of high school in the South, organizing a kiss-in, and that man in Saipan, those straight couples who support us so fervently they’re donating their time to organize a kiss-in in their home towns, I think about them all and I realize, this isn’t about kissing. It’s not just about protecting the rights we already have, it’s not about fighting for what’s ours already. It’s about fighting against homophobia, and being our best selves, showing the world, and the next generation, what’s important. Showing the world, and the next generation, that everything truly important, begins around the ones we love, and that, in order for us to be our best selves, in order for every person to reach their full potential, being who we are, and being able to include those we love in our lives, is essential.
To those who have said “gays want to make out in public and force their lifestyles on us!” I say, hogwash. Most gays I know, even in big cities, still feel a bit slef-conscious about giving their loved one a kiss in public. Why? Because we know that many, many people will look at it and may actually be uncomfortable. So, some of us glance around, hoping that no one will notice, and hoping, worse, that our loved one won’t notice we’re looking around, worried someone might notice. Because that homophobia we’ll be fighting on August 15 is the same homophobia we fight every day, each one of us, in our own way. It’s the homophobia we grew up with.
That simple act of giving our loved one a kiss in public is an act that, for a great many members of the LGBT community, represents years of aggression against our own internalized homophobia, years of fighting against decades of “don’t rock the boat, don’t embarrass anyone” training. On Saturday, August 15, thousands will give their partners a kiss that has more meaning in it than any passerby, any onlooker – who supports us or not – could possibly realize. And we’ll all be one step closer to the goal: Full equality, in name, in act, and in perception, than we were just one minute, and one kiss before.
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President Donald Trump concluded his executive time Friday morning with a statement announcing he would end the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and laid out his requirements for a deal with Iran, before declaring, “I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination.”
After a two-hour meeting with his advisors, Trump left without making a decision.
“It was not clear why Mr. Trump did not reach a decision,” The New York Times reports.
“In recent days, the sides have exchanged fire, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened a return to full-scale war,” the Times added.
Among Trump’s demands were that the Strait be reopened “immediately,” with no tolls imposed on traffic, and all water mines removed — although he noted, “we have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers.”
“Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of ‘heading home!’ Say hello to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President,” he wrote. Trump added: “No money will be exchanged, until further notice.”
READ MORE: Judge: Trump Cannot Rename Kennedy Center
Were an agreement to be reached, the Times noted, “it could give Mr. Trump an off-ramp from a war that has driven up oil prices and grown deeply unpopular at home. It could also eventually allow Iran to regain access to frozen overseas assets and provide a route for Tehran to get billions of dollars of oil revenue flowing again.”
Even if the Strait reopened immediately, experts warn, replacing the lost oil could take months.
“The spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a telephone interview with Iranian state media on Friday that current negotiations were limited in scope and did not include ‘the nuclear issue,'” the Times reports. Trump did specifically state that “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb.”
He also mentioned “nuclear dust,” writing that it “is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it.”
The president said that it “will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and destroyed.”
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Image via Reuters
A federal judge has ordered that President Donald Trump cannot rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, nor may he close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote, CNBC reports. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Just weeks after he was sworn into office, Trump removed members of the board of the Kennedy Center and replaced them with allies and administration officials, including Richard Grenell, Pam Bondi, and Susie Wiles. The new board then voted for Trump to become chairman of the Kennedy Center.
In December, after the White House announced that the board of the Kennedy Center — the official, “living memorial” to the late president — had voted to rename the iconic cultural institution the Trump-Kennedy Center, several members of the Kennedy family took the opportunity to denounce the move.
Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California, wrote: “The Kennedy Center was named after my uncle, President John F Kennedy.”
She called the renaming “beyond comprehension,” “beyond wild,” “downright weird,” and “obsessive in a weird way,” while explaining that the Kennedy Center was named in honor of a man who was interested in the arts, culture, education, language, and history.
“Next thing perhaps he will want to rename JFK Airport, rename the Lincoln Memorial, the Trump Lincoln Memorial,” she said. “The Trump Jefferson Memorial. The Trump Smithsonian. The list goes on.”
May 17 is President John F. Kennedy’s birthday, he was born in 1917.
This article has been updated.
Image via Reuters
The Villages in Florida is deep red Trump country — it’s called the “largest retirement community in the world,” where nearly seven out of 10 county residents voted for Trump in 2024. It’s roughly four hours to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, and it’s not unusual to see Trump flags on the backs of residents’ golf carts.
Trump visited The Villages just a few weeks ago, where one resident told BBC News, “we’re as red as red gets.”
“The Village are very Republican and very Trumpster,” said another.
“Trump 2028!” declared another, waving his fist.
But the tide appears to be turning in Florida, where several polls spell bad news for Trump. His approval is underwater in one poll from April, and one released on Thursday shows a majority of Florida voters hold a negative view of the president.
Still, some may find a letter to the editor in The Villages local news declaring “MAGA has abandoned core Republican principles” surprising.
The letter declares MAGA is “not conservatism,” but rather a “betrayal” that has “embraced indulgence.”
“The irony is cruel,” says the letter writer, Carl Young. “Those who once railed against ‘big government’ now defend its excesses when it serves their side. The philosophy of restraint has been replaced by the politics of spectacle. Rome is burning, and the arsonists call the flames freedom.”
Young scorches Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that he says “produced the highest deficit spending in history.”
Citing dystopian and totalitarian works by George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and Ayn Rand, he writes: “This is not renewal but regression. America has been dragged into an alternate 1984, where responsibility collapses and chaos parades as strength. The political temperature has risen to 451. The pigs now rule the farm.”
“These were never meant as prophecies. They were warnings,” he continues. “Atlas has finally shrugged.”
Image via Shutterstock
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