Sex/uality Artifacts

Corey Jordan
Sexuality Artifact

The artifact I decided to share with the class today is a picture I found on face book during the summer. the image was surfaced on the internet around the time of the same sex marriage law being passed in the united states. On the left side there was the famous image of the battle of Iwo Jima, with the American male soldiers pushing the up the American flag. On the right side there is a picture of shirt less males pushing up the gay flag. The picture of the shirtless males is in the exact same as the famous image of the American soldiers. There was a lot of discussion of this image being posted on the internet. Many people thought the gay pride image was disrespectful to the American soldiers that lost their life during that battle. The battle on Iwo Jima took nearly 6,000 American lives, while wounding nearly 17,500. This world war two battle was a big turning point in the war for the United States. People also claim that the picture only contains males, people wonder if this a gay pride movement, why isn’t their any females, transgender, etc. that the gay flag represents.
The gay community believes that the picture is not meant to be disrespectful to the men that fought in that battle or in the war. The supporters of the picture believe that the image represents the uphill battle that the community had to fight to get equal marriage rights. When discussing the image with Dr. Rainey, we brought up a very good point on the image that I did not notice when looking at the image. The military has a don’t ask, don’t tell policy where you keep quite on your sexuality. So, some of those men who served our country during this time period could of been gay, without anyone knowing. The men fighting for our country and for our freedom, could be gay and they do not have the same freedoms as the other couples in the United States.
I decided to share this image to class, because our class discussion was on sex, gender, and sexuality. I believe it was a good image to bring to the class’s attention because many students were not aware that the image existed. During class we talked about the different sexualities that many people associate themselves with. I also did some research on different countries and the military policies on the LGBT community. I found that Canada and Australia allow all LGBT members to join the military and to serve their country. While in the United States, gay and bisexual individuals were allowed to join the military.