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Same-sex marriage becomes legal in Maryland next week, and oh it’s going to take some getting used to. How about the horror of having to photograph two men or two women for a wedding ceremony. Apparently one anonymous photog has a professional problem with the aesthetics of it:
John Zito, president of the Maryland Wedding Professionals Association, said he knows of a wedding photographer who “didn’t feel comfortable” taking same-sex couples’ photos because he was unaccustomed to posing two grooms or two brides together. Zito would not identify the photographer.
“I’m a photographer by trade myself, and I’ve done a couple of commitment ceremonies, and it is kind of awkward,” Zito said. “When you have two men, I don’t know how to pose them, and this person didn’t know how to provide them the same services [as he would provide straight couples] if they didn’t know how to pose them.”
I’m sure that he or she can learn, no? Obviously social changes do roil convention, but people can adapt . But the familiar objections are there too – like county clerks in St. Mary’s County who are the only officials raising religious objections to handing out civil marriage licenses. Um, it’s your job, folks. DO IT or find another line of work.
To avoid those offensive same-sex couples, some business owners would rather stop serving any wedding services. Take this guy:
Discover Annapolis Tours, which offers tours by old-fashioned trolley that have been popular in Annapolis weddings, will no longer serve weddings as a result of owner Matt Grubbs’ religious beliefs, The Baltimore Sun reported. In an email to a prospective client, Grubbs urged Maryland residents to lobby for a change in the law exempting religious business owners.
If a business leaves the wedding industry, rather than picking and choosing between clients, he is avoiding discrimination, said Glendora Hughes, general counsel for the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights.
Really? Would this guy refuse to service interracial couples back in the day? Don’t ask. But social change has been in the wind for some time, and those choosing to avoid/ignore/complain about the extension of civil rights do so at their own peril. Over at CNN, Frida Ghitis offers her ideas about why change is coming rapidly despite a very rough go by conservatives to turn back the clock:
It may have something to do with the media — social media, television, the Internet — providing a boost to the message, a message of human dignity and common sense. It certainly has much to do with demographics. Young people, growing up with new ideas, are picking up the torch of social change.
Today, a majority of Americans, 57%, favor stricter gun control, jumping sharply from 39% just a few months ago. That’s bad news for the most conservative elements in society, who think the government should stand back from almost every aspect of our lives.
But the truly radical transformation has come in the area of gay rights. For the first time, Gallup Polls show a majority of Americans support full marriage equality for gay couples. That’s an astonishing change. But it’s not as astonishing as the wholesale acceptance of gay people that has suffused American society in the last few years.
Perhaps it was “Will and Grace” or “Glee,” or President Obama’s long-delayed approval of same-sex marriage. Probably all of the above and much more, but a switch has been flipped. The cause has gained an unstoppable momentum, so unstoppable that even if full equality is denied by the conservative-tilted Supreme Court, scheduled to rule on the issue by this summer, it will only amount to a delay of the inevitable.
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Their loss. The good news is that more socially evolved people will move in and the homophobic wedding planners will become a niche outfit, relegated to being on the approved by NOM list and avoided by everybody else. Business Darwinism at work.
“Old-fashioned trolley”? Really?
The vehicle in the photo is very clearly NOT a true “old-fashioned trolley”. It is a bus. It has rubber-tired wheels. It runs on pavement, not rails. It has no overhead wires providing power.
Feh. You’re better off renting a PedalPub if you want the open-air experience; at least you’ll get some exercise on the way.
Another example of vicious liberal intolerance. What happened to the argument that approving so called “same sex marriage” wouldn’t negatively affect anyone else.
Exactly. The worst of our species, the bigots and their ilk, will soon be either dead or bred out of existence. The day can’t come soon enough.
That’s for damn sure.
It’s not “liberal intolerance”. Clearly it’s free market forces at work. Capitalism and all. These dinosaurs don’t want to offer a legal and in demand service for whatever reason and their potential clients choose another provider. It’s the free market correcting itself. Ron Paul and Ayn Rand would be proud, (if Ron Paul wasn’t a homophobic bigot, that is).
It’s too bad there is not some kind of Bushmaster festival where they could all go wild and take themselves out. It would be such a relief, but alas, they will continue in their fashion, to take out mass numbers of better specimens while they off themselves one at a time. It is tiresome of them.
Sadly, I’ve been trying to get fundies to consider beating the Rapture rush for a long time now. No takers though.
Because the Rapture will be such a rush, you know, when they are vindicated. Who would quit early?
I’m a photog, posing people of the same sex is always fun, all you need is light… The real problem with weddings are over medicated mother in laws who slow you down or drunk uncles who fall down the stairs and start fighting the cake…
The photogs didn’t have a problem with photographing gays except for the problem of posing them, which gets to one of my peeves — posing for photos. Why can’t the scene be spontaneous? Two people being naturally friendly w/o the pose? That’s my two bits. Hate posing. Stand over there! Nuts.
So my message to the two people: – be natural – express your joy of the moment with each other. I’ll take care of the rest. Scrap the pose. My goal is to reform the photo industry. Just say No to Cheese.
What do religious objections have to do with this? There’s no “right” to a civil service job. When here in Mexico, the State of Cohuila passed a “civil union” bill for same gender couples, the Governor — who opposed the measure — simply made it clear that civil clerks who refused to comply with state law would be fired. End of story.
It’s not same-sex marriage that’s negatively affecting these people, it’s their own prejudices. That should be obvious, especially to anyone whose ideology includes an emphasis on “personal responsibility.” It’s very interesting that these businesses with such strong religious convictions (and since corporations are now “persons,” according to SCOTUS, I guess we have to figure that they have deeply held personal beliefs) had no difficulty in complying with existing non-discrimination laws, but suddenly now that “those people” are getting married, it’s a make-or-break situation.
I have no sympathy, only pity.
Ditto. Any photographer who can’t pose a same-sex couple for a wedding photo needs to find a real job. Best solution: let them pose themselves, and then just tweak it.
I suppose the photographers who cannot figure out how to photograph same-sex couples might be able to use their cell phones to ask photographers in Massachusetts or such places where they have been managing to do this for a long time already.
But maybe that’s just a wide-eyed liberal idea — trying to learn something.
Those with the shingles out there are either real photographers or hacks. It’s probably a blessing to have a mechanism to sort them out. Then let the real ones prosper and the hacks can go work at Wal-Mart doing portraits if they can manage that.
Zito is probably a religious fanatic who can’t cope with the world if he doesn’t see everything in stereotypical gender roles. A strong, dominating husband and a weak, submissive wife. Everything else is alien to him. This what a strict Christian upbringing does to people. They are raised on this crap basically from birth on.
In any case those photographers are untalented morons. I’ve never noticed a difference in the poses in straight and gay wedding pictures.
These homophobic photographers can just put in their advertisements that they don’t serve same-sex couples… and watch their pathetic businesses sink into bankruptcy.
You don’t know how to pose them? How about telling them their options and letting them indicate to you what they want for themselves?
Isn’t that how business transactions usually go?
Most posed wedding photos are played out cliches anyway.
An ad like that might well violate the law.
So-called “wedding professional” John Zito, and the anonymous coward he’s covering for, are both unskilled idiots. Both should forfeit their licenses if they truly have no idea how to pose 2 adults at any kind of ceremony.
They’re probably just anti-LGBT bigots who don’t want to serve same-gender couples. “We don’t know how to pose such people” is such an obvious, pathetic excuse.
Same-gender marriage was always promised not to affect anybody — except bigots. It was always understood that bigots would have mental breakdowns over same-gender couples.
The bigoted photographers claim that they just “don’t know how” to pose 2 men or 2 women, but they admit being able to pose 2 African-Americans, 2 Jews, 2 short people, interracial couples, inter-faith couples, 2 red-haired persons, and 2 heads-of-state.
They claim it’s only 2 men or 2 women that bring their photography skills to a crashing halt.
But a same-gender couple is posed the same way that a female school principal and a female teacher are posed, or a male coach and a male athlete are posed: 2 happy adults taking great mutual pride in a joint event.
Therefore, the claim that they just “don’t know how” is a lie. They want to refuse service to certain customers, but the law prohibiting that was in place before same-gender marriage was even proposed, so the problem isn’t same-gender marriage; it’s bigotry.