The concepts related to homosexual marriages have been a part of a lot of criticism right from the time of its initiation. This concept continues to exist as a cause celebre, standing firm with a quite many people defying its exercise and a many others justifying it. The highly controversial topic has been continuously striving to be entitled as a legalised civil right with a many countries still not giving it the title of legally acceptable practice. But the condition has surely improved to an extent in comparison to its initial status. Gay marriages, after passing through a highly complex period of up and downs are now being granted their deserved position in the society with many states such as Indiana removing the ban on the practice. One needs to be highly thankful to social media for the role it played to drag the concept out of gloomy scenario. Technology has advanced enormously and lead to sensational changes to the life of human beings. With many technical gifts to the entire mankind technology now has justified itself as a boon to the entire society. Social Media, which acts as a descendant of technology, has been contributing its bit in moulding the favourable outlook of the gay marriages. Playing a role of protagonist to curve the situation in favour gay marriages, it carries its own relevance regarding the issue. Social and online media proving out to be a medium to represent marginalized groups must be lauded for its efforts. Various groups and organisations have been using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to gather virtually or physically and to promote the issues and rights of gay community. Such Medias have justified their significance by the amount of support they garner from all around the world.
United States however has seen a huge and rapid expansion in terms of gay rights with the provision of legal status to same-sex marriage in about 13 states. (‘Social Media and the’) This has been possible due to a large number of social media campaigns targeting the rights of LGBT. One highly successful example can be “It Gets Better Project” which was one of the first social media campaigns of its kind and proved out to be a great achievement in reaching out to teens, both gay and straight. (‘Social Media and the’) The campaign was started in 2010 after the incident of suicide of two American teenagers due to intensely being bullied for being gay. Soon an eight-minute video posted on YouTube portraying the struggles one has to face as a gay man and ways to tackle the harassment resulted into a stir in the society. A mere initiative was soon turned into a mass movement when many gays, transgender, bisexuals, lesbians and allied supporters joined the protest. Further within few months, a number of other celebrities including US President Barack Obama participated in the campaign and posted their own videos hailing for the support of gays. It took only three years for the campaign to gather more than 50,000 videos in support of gay. (‘Social Media and the’)
Twitter, another crucial organ of social media played its own crucial role in gaining support among the activists. It further enabling to augment the support by allowing an individual to reach out to a broad community, truly justified the effective nature of social media in raising awareness. The continuous struggle on the wheels of the social media compelled the Supreme Court to overrule the law denying marriage of same sex couples and the financial benefits of those marriages. After the Supreme Court’s decision U.S. President Barack Obama too expressed his support for same-sex marriage via twitter. A single tweet from the President reaching about a 150 million of audience depicts the mass influence of Social Media. (‘Social Media and the’)
Moreover, social media also played a major role in an initiative started by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) for the status of same sex marriages. The initiative encouraged the supporters to substitute their own Facebook profile picture with the “equality” logo of Human Rights Campaign. This in turn resulted into Facebook going red for marriage equality in 2013 as millions of profile pictures were replaced with the Human Rights Campaign's logo of red and pink colour. This initiative turned out to be one of the most viral campaigns in the history of Facebook. (‘The power of social media’) The success of the campaign can be observed by the facts that 59 per cent of the American people now stand in the support of marriage equality, 87 per cent on the other hand knows some person who is LGBT and about 49 per cent accept him as a friend or a family member. These numbers surely have a presence strong enough to justify the trend of acceptance.
The vastness of the social media’s influential nature however can be better judged by considering its status globally. In the year 2013 Russian government banned any kind of promotion of homosexual propaganda and imposed heavy fines and even the jail terms for its violation. The law thus made it illegal to propagate gay relationships. (‘Social Media and the’) As a result, many of the supporters were arrested and many immigrants were not allowed to enter the Russian states. Such a move by Russia targeting to confine people’s voices was now hailing to be addressed by a bigger platform. People from all over the world thus used social media to protest against the law and to raise their voices in support of the LGBT community. The movement “It Gets Better,” soon advocated for a boycott of Russian vodka. Many popular Russian brands were too boycotted as a part of protest against the legislation by the Russian government. This soon resulted into barring of a couple of Russian brands in the Canada, Australia, United States and Great Britain. Even the celebrities such as Lady Gaga joined the movement by raising her voice through Facebook to support the LGBT community. (‘In Social Media, Support’)
Egypt government however perceived the same sex marriages as a step to defame Islam and often rigorous punishment were sentenced to the people indulging in gay marriages. Social media soon came into action and the consequences were appalling. The protest took down even President Hosni Mubarak. But even after the ouster of the President, the activists of LGBT did not gain the deserved acceptance in the country. The scenario thus demanded for increased role of Social media. The social media therefore helped in narrating events, creating a public forum and acting as a voice to many gay community members. (‘Social Media and the’)
Social media thus, has been standing firm with the gay community to fight for their equal representation in the society. Sometimes it plays the role of a big brother with whom one can share his own experience of gay rights like the forum of ‘It Gets Better Project’, which allowed people to create awareness by sharing individual stories while on the other hand, it also moulds itself into a Civil rights mass movement compelling the mobilization of diverse groups. The campaigns of Social media if coordinated in an organised manner have been instrumental in gathering the interest of various groups of supporters. The initiative has succeeded in gaining the marriage equality by allowing people to take a stand and raise their voices for the minority community of gay and the tool that made it happen is Social media. Why the question dealing with an individual’s feeling of comfort and happiness with person of same sex need to tackle so many accusations? Why the same status cannot be granted to the homosexuals as given to heterosexuals? They are too humans. They too have feeling. Even they possess the right to opt for the best suitable companion. The topic possessing a whole lot of dimensions to be dealt with continues to prove its existence as a subject captivating allegations from all round the corner, trying to taint its image. But till the time social media stands beside such communities it will not let the allegations overshadow the rights of gay community.
References
Hitlin, P. and Tan, S. (2012). In Social Media, Support for Same-sex Marriage. [online] Pew Research Center's Journalism Project. Available at: http://www.journalism.org/2012/05/17/social-media-support-samesex-marriage/ [Accessed 7 Dec. 2014].
Hoffman, J. (2014). Sharing Our Way toward Equality: Social Media and Gay Rights - NPQ - Nonprofit Quarterly. [online] Nonprofitquarterly.org. Available at: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/policysocial-context/20326-sharing-our-way-toward-equality-social-media-and-gay-rights.html [Accessed 7 Dec. 2014].
Salzburg.umd.edu, (2014). Social Media and the LGBT Community. [online] Available at: http://www.salzburg.umd.edu/unesco/social-media-and-lgbt-community [Accessed 7 Dec. 2014].
thestar.com, (2014). The power of social media in the gay rights movement | Toronto Star. [online] Available at: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/04/01/the_power_of_social_media_in_the_gay_rights_movement.html [Accessed 7 Dec. 2014].
