Students strike pose to support NOH8 campaign

A picture can speak a thousand words, but sometimes it only needs to say a few.

In light of Maine voters’ decision last week to repeal a law allowing same-sex marriage, a group of IU students is looking to protest with photography.

The group NOH8 @ IU, along with OUT, will be staging a photo shoot today to rally support for marriage equality and showcase IU student solidarity.

The event is inspired by the grassroots photo campaign started by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska. The photos taken at IU will be sent in to NOH8 Campaign’s Web site to join thousands of photographs of celebrities, politicians and other supporters nationwide.

According to the Web site, the photos will eventually be used as part of a billboard campaign and magazine spreads.

The idea behind the initiative is to create a way to symbolize all the people who are oppressed through a form of silent protest, junior Chris Hall said.

Students and Bloomington residents who come to have their photo taken will be asked to wear a white T-shirt and will have NOH8 painted on their cheek in black and red, he said. Then they’ll have duct tape placed over their mouth before the photo is taken.

“They have to have duct tape over their mouths to symbolize all the people who can’t speak for themselves or can’t get the word out,” Hall said. “Basically, it just symbolizes all the people who are oppressed. It’s not necessarily just for gay rights, but it’s mainly for oppression anywhere.”

Hall, who originally learned about the campaign while surfing the Web, got together with a couple of friends and decided to start the NOH8 group at IU. 

Senior Amanda Rafkin, co-founder of the group, said that the photo shoot is not solely meant to garner support for gay marriage but rather to give people the right to individual choice.

“It’s not so much about the marriage facet for me so much as about the freedom to do as you choose,” she said. “So whether or not I think or you think or anybody thinks that gays or straights or anybody should be married, I think people should have the choice.”

Rafkin said she feels rights and privileges that can really affect people monetarily, physically or emotionally should never be reserved for specific categories of people.

A tiny percentage of people are controlling what everybody else can do, and nobody can act on it because it’s difficult to change, she said.

With the photo shoot, the group is hoping to show people that something can be done about it – something done without being irrational, said Bloomington resident Sami Coop-Escudero.

“The silent thing shows that we can actually do something about it without acting out irrationally,” said Coop-Escudero, “without being angry and hitting somebody and without bashing them like people do to us.”

The first photo shoot is only a preliminary event, and NOH8 hopes to continue throughout the year so more people can participate. 

“Everybody needs to know that this isn’t just to make gay people able to get married,” Coop-Escudero said. “It’s not just for that. You don’t have to want to get married. You don’t have to be gay. You can be straight. You can be a supporter.”