You probably don’t need an article to tell you that kissing is pretty great. But kissing can also be a force for change—namely, the “Kiss-In,” a longstanding form of queer protest.
The concept is pretty simple: Someone’s being a homophobic jerkface? Get a whole bunch of your queer friends together, go to their place of business or government building, and kiss your little gay hearts out. Not only is it fun, but it also shows how foolish the person is being. Imagine, getting that mad over a kiss!
Kiss-ins have happened all over the world. There have been kiss-ins at Mexican theme parks and malls, London grocery stores, Swiss daycares, and American Chick-fil-As. The first kiss-ins started in New York City during the early ‘70s, but which is the first is unclear, according to Autostraddle. A kiss-in celebrated the first anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 1970, but some sources say that a protest at an NYC bar that kicked out gay patrons came earlier that year.
“We have to come out into the open and stop being ashamed, or else people will go on treating us as freaks. This march is an affirmation and declaration of our new pride,” Michael Brown, co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front, told the New York Times at the time.
“It serves notice on every politician in the state and nation that homosexuals are not going to hide anymore. We’re becoming militant, and we won’t be harassed and degraded anymore,” agreed Martin Robinson from the Gay Activities Alliance.
No matter which action was the first, kiss-ins became a popular form of protest. In 1972, a kiss-in happened in front of the Democratic National Convention after the party rejected a proposal to add gay rights to their platform. Unfortunately, that particular protest was unsuccessful, with delegates mocking and jeering the protesters and their requests for the party to provide legal protection for the LGBTQ+ community.
Though kiss-ins continued on a smaller scale throughout the rest of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, the AIDS crisis reignited its popularity. ACT UP and Queer Nation embraced the kiss-in, staging events all over the United States. The resurgence was kicked off by ACT UP’s “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster campaign, designed by the gay art collective Gran Fury. The posters showed heterosexual and homosexual couples kissing, with the legend “Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do” inscribed above.
The original posters were designed both to call attention to the AIDS crisis and end common misunderstandings about how HIV spreads. Many Americans at the time believed all sorts of things—that AIDS could be spread by touching someone with it, using the same toilet seat, or, yes, kissing.
“Everyone in the world tells me to be afraid of you and that you’re a danger,” Heidi Dorow, activist and poster model, told author Jack Lowery, describing the type of mindset the posters were fighting against.
Queer kissing became brave—not that there was any actual danger of HIV transmission, but because of the perceived danger—and kiss-ins again were a popular way to visibly protest homophobia. Famously, at the 1992 Academy Awards, Queer Nation held one to call attention to the lack of queer-themed films from major Hollywood studios and the lack of recognition queer indies were getting.
That wasn’t the first Queer Nation kiss-in. In 1990, the group held a “visibility action” at the Boston Stocks and Bonds Club. About a dozen gay and lesbian people kissed and danced at the club, just the same as the straight couples partying there, according to contemporaneous reporting.
But at the end of the event, an off-duty police officer moonlighting as club security picked up Richard Cresswell by the throat after seeing Cresswell kiss his partner and moved him towards the door. Bouncers at the club also shoved Kelly McSorley down the stairs and pushed Jacqueline Stoll outside and swore at her. The abuse of the queer patrons ended up in a lawsuit—and the three who had been hurt by security ended up winning $30,000 (about $120,000 in today’s dollars) from the owner of the bar.
Brave activists in Russia held a kiss-in in front of the Parliament in 2013. The action was in protest of the infamous “gay propaganda” ban. Though the law is officially directed at “spreading information aimed at forming non-traditional sexual behavior among children,” the ban has been used to punish anything deemed too gay, including a bank card intended for children that featured a cartoon unicorn dabbing or a woman’s rainbow earrings.
Kissing protesters were hit with eggs, stinging nettles, and urine thrown by Russian Orthodox counterprotesters, according to Bloomberg. Police ended up arresting at least 20 of the kissers but none of the counterprotesters, even though they were the ones who turned to violence.
Despite kiss-ins being eye-catching and effective media opportunities—after all, the news of the abuse of the Russian protesters made waves nationally, and made their attackers look even worse than usual—there has been some criticism of the technique.
“First, I think using the tactic of a kiss-in plays into the ‘yuck factor’ of our opposition,” Waymon Hudson wrote in a 2012 editorial for GoPride Chicago. “But if, as a movement, we are trying to gain acceptance of our love and relationships, then perhaps using our love and affection as a ‘shock tactic’ hurts our cause.”
But others say it’s the visibility that’s the entire point. Not only does it show that people aren’t ashamed to be queer—despite what the bigots want—but it helps those who may not have thought about gay rights to see how silly the opposition is.
Tim McCaskell took part in a 1976 kiss-in in Toronto on the city’s legendary Yonge Street in protest of a gay couple being arrested for a mere kiss. McCaskell told the Toronto Star in 2015 that the activists were prepared to be arrested as well—but when they weren’t, that too sent an important message.
“On the one hand, it didn’t escalate into a kind of political battle in the courts (which is where the group was willing to take it if anyone had been charged). But on the other hand, the fact that we had done it and documented it, and that police hadn’t intervened, kind of undermined the notion that two men kissing was somehow an indecent act that needed to have legal intervention,” he said.
Activist Vinnie Amendolare, who took part in the 2018 Voices4/RUSA LGBT kiss-in at the Uzbek Consulate in New York City in protest of anti-gay violence in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan, agreed.
“So when we as a collective staged our kiss-in, the queer kiss for us is an act that is radical in its love and profound in its simplicity, a way to exemplify nonviolence through love. Because queer love is actively and constantly challenged by the heteronormative society we live in, LGBTQ+ people have a unique opportunity to physically manifest our faith and love through this form of protest. A queer kiss is not a sin or an abomination; not a crime or a perversion — but a sign of a love too free for the bounds of societal constructs, religions, laws, or predilections,” he wrote at the time.
“That’s why queer groups have been holding kiss-ins for years, and it’s why we held our own. Each kiss carries forward decades of hope and history, sparked by the belief that one day we’ll all be free.”
