The winner of the Great Gaycation Giveaway has been selected. Congratulations, Lindsey Salay of Miami, Florida! Your winning essay on why marriage equality is important to you deeply impressed the judges, and you and a guest have won an all-expenses paid dream trip to the gay-friendly resort Oasis SENS in Cancun, Mexico.
Thanks to all of our sponsors: Oasis SENS, Gayborhood App, Aqua Foundation for Women, Brushstrokes, Del Shores, For The Kid in All of Us, Georgia Equality, HRC Atlanta, IGLTA, North Georgia Rainbow Coalition and Rainbow Days at Six Flags Over Georgia.
Read Lindsey’s winning essay below the next photo.
Lindsey and
Amanda
Sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
First comes love,
Then comes …
a) “gay” marriage b) civil unions c) domestic
partnerships d) none of the above
By simply inputting two female names, this popular childhood song
transforms into a complex social issue. Although the love remains the
same, the subsequent opportunities are not equal. Marriage equality is
important to me because marriage is the ultimate symbol of love. To
restrict gay marriage, is to say that my love is less.
For that LGBTQ child on the playground hearing the above song, I want
them to know their love is equal. I never want another LGBTQ child to
give up their dream to marry like I began to do as a confused
teenager. Growing up as an LGBTQ child is confusing enough without
society telling us our love is not worthy of marriage.
On June 26th, the Supreme Court favorably ruled on both Proposition 8
and DOMA cases. That same day my parents celebrated a quarter century
of love and devotion, twenty-five years of marriage. This parallel
helped me realize how much I want to eventually marry the woman I
love. When I come out as a lesbian, I am often asked if I “still”
want to get married. As if everything I have wanted has suddenly
changed now they know I am a lesbian; the only change is that I want a
wife not a husband.
While volunteering at the Trevor Project, I took an implicit
association test that involved sorting pictures into homosexual and
heterosexual categories. I consistently placed a picture of a wedding
into the “wrong” category, homosexual. No matter how hard I tried,
I could not sort marriage to be exclusively heterosexual. In my heart,
I know that marriage is about true love not gender.
All photos courtesy of Oasis SENS
