Gay Marriage Announcement
There's a post up over at Queerty about a couple of guys that are suing their alma mater, American University, for falsley announcing their same sex marriage in the school's magazine (the guys say they're straight). The two are upset that American University for not checking their sources before printing the material. The magazine also incorrectly reported that one of the two was the CFO of a (fictional) group called the Gay Rights Brigade.This sounds like a fratermity prank to me, and I think if the two guys are going to be suing anyone, they should be suing the people that are responsible for the prank itself. Then again, a lawsuit sounds like a pretty sad way to respond to something like this.
If you really look into it, this is either 1) a get-rich-quick scheme by the two guys (even if someone did create this prank at their expense) or 2) latent homophobia. The optimist in me (if I can even use that term here) thinks that this is just a case of 2 guys that saw the opportunity to pathetically try to make a buck through a frivilous lawsuit. But, I can't help but think that if this prank was announcing a fictional marriage between two people of the opposite sex, these guys would have just laughed it off and asked the school to print a correction.
Are we really at an age where being called gay is worth $1.5 million in damages? I sure hope not, but like I've been saying, this whole gay thing isn't as smooth sailing as some people like to claim.
For the record, my alma mater printed the announcement of my ceremony to J in the montly email and the quarterly magazine (and as far as I've seen, we were the first gay marriage to get announced). Hopefully stupid stuff like this won't prevent them from continuing to do so.
posted by Brady @ 8:39 AM
3 Comments:
In fairness, it's unlikely that someone would submit a false wedding announcement as a prank. There's simply no humor in it.
The "humor" in this prank wasn't the announcement itself, but the underlying implication of the announcement: That the two men are gay. It's also the basis of the claim of defamation of character in the lawsuit.
This is why I find the insistence that the lawsuit isn't about homophobia to be disingenuous. Even if the two men themselves aren't homophobic, the basis of their defamation claims rest firmly on the argument that society is homophobic and will think less of them because it's been suggested they're gay.
Jarred, I agree that the claim that the suit isn't about homophobia are disingenious. And, I agree that the humor in this prank was that they guys were gay.
However, I can see a false wedding announcement of a straight couple still taking place. Maybe it would be a false announcement between two people of the opposite sex that dislied each other during college (so it'd be more of an inside joke), or maybe it could be a popular guy on campus and a nerdy female.
Sure, the mass appeal of the prank might not be the same, but I could still see it happening.
I suppose I can see your point about the two examples of a man-woman wedding announcement prank. I didn't think that far through the whole idea.
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