Love Goes Beyond This
I was inspired to create my broadside “Love Goes Beyond This” after reading Nava Atlas’s book Why you can't get married : an unwedding album. Her book touched on political unrest involving same sex marriage and interracial marriage throughout the 19th-21st centuries. Since the legalization of gay marriage in the United States in 2015, there has been a greater surge of LGBT pride and ally support. My broadside attempted to correct two misconceptions about gay marriage.
The first is that “gay marriage” is a union between two men or two women, when in fact it can be a union between any two people who identify with the LGBT community. Gay marriage also includes individuals that do not conform to the gender binary and those that identify as a heterosexual couple, but also as members of the LGBT community. I addressed this by altering the gender neutral symbol and replacing it with a heart.
The second misconception that I addressed was the one of religion, especially Christianity. Many claim that the Bible does not “approve” of gay marriage. This argument has played a major component in the suppression of LGBT identifying individuals. There is no evidence that the Bible supports gay marriage, but I arranged a very popular verse to reflect that it can.
I hope my piece reaches an audience and helps educate those that don’t understand this issue.
-Sam Shaffer, Scripps '21