The Kiss-In in the John Snow: and what we can do about homophobia

by Petit Fours

The kerffufle at the John Snow pub in Soho this week – where two men were thrown out by management for kissing each other – reminded me of a couple of things. One, that it is still quite difficult to be openly gay in the UK, and two, that gays are great at organising themselves over social networking sites. The protest Kiss-In organised by blog So-So-Gay over Facebook and Twitter attracted national media, got hundreds of gays out in the streets kissing each other and forced the pub to close early.

There are lots of reasons to be really proud of the reaction to the incident – I am. I was also heartened to see that at the time of the eviction a nearby straight couple stood up against the ejection, and got kicked out themselves – that’s a big deal. And of course the response to the Gay Kiss-In and support from public figures on Twitter and so on was pretty phenomenal.

Inevitably though, it did bring me to reflect on a cold reality. The surprise in this story wasn’t that a pub in the UK was homophobic, it was that the John Snow, a pub full of media-types in the centre of London’s gay district was homophobic. What hope is there for Swindon, Glasgow or even Croydon if this is happening in Soho? [Grinds hand into face]

I imagine that in 90%-95% of pubs across the country, gay people kissing would have problems – whether it’s from customers or management.

The reason gay people aren’t thrown out of pubs for kissing more often is because they usually don’t kiss each other in pubs. Except gay pubs of course. Which is why gay dates often end with trips to G-A-Y Late or the local gay dive bar because if you’re going to put your hand on her thigh, you want it to lead onto a hot snog – not a fight with fellow customers, the necessity to make a political statement about your sexual orientation and a potentially hurtful situation where you’re made to feel humiliated and like the weird kid in the school playground, once again.

We self-censor a lot. Even as an uber-out gay living in London, I self-censor a lot. Clothes-wise – no, but behaviour-wise – yes. I wouldn’t kiss goodbye to someone at a bus stop, I’d lower my voice before saying the word “gay” in a cafe and I have never – outside Soho (a small area of the UK’s total landmass)- walked down a street holding hands with a girl. How are we going to improve visibility and make it possible to do this, if we keep stopping ourselves doing it?

Are we going to have to turn every nice sunny afternoon date into a political statement?

Maybe there should be some sort of touring gay kissing bus, which visits a few select pubs villages and estates across Britain each summer, dumps off a load of gays, who have little snogs, hand out leaflets and just raises awareness.. Perhaps we should start compiling lists and maps of pubs and places where it is certified okay to look and be gay and places where it isn’t, and start using public naming-and-shaming and pink pound power to boycott places where it isn’t.

Got any experiences like this? Bright ideas for improving things? Stick them below..