👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 Smooching for Justice: A Brief History of the 'Kiss-In' 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨

QUEER WORD
KISS-IN

What it means:

a form of protest where participants publicly kiss - most often in same-sex pairs - as an act of resistance, visibility, or defiance against discrimination.

Let’s use it in a sentence:

The kiss-in was going great until my mum walked past and waved. Nothing kills revolutionary zeal quite like hearing 'use a little less tongue, darling!' shouted from across the street.

A little bit of history:

Ok, ok. I acknowledge that there's a heavy dose of bias when I say this, but us queers really do have a flair for making everything we touch that little bit more exciting.

We’ve reshaped music, revolutionised fashion, and even helped invent the computer.

So, it probably comes as no surprise that we also gave the noble act of protest a uniquely queer twist with none other than the kiss-in.

Kiss-in, you say?

Yes! A kiss-in is a form of protest where participants gather in public, lock lips and get all smoochy for an undisclosed amount of time, all in an effort to draw attention to whatever injustice they’re resisting.

It evolved from the (far less titillating) ‘gay-in’ — itself a queer riff on the more buttoned-up ‘sit-in’, where protestors would occupy a space and refuse to leave until their demands were heard.

But what are the origins of the kiss-in?

This is where things are a bit fuzzy. As with most queer history our records are unreliable at best. And that’s because, for much of history, documenting our stories was either dangerous, or deemed unimportant by the mainstream.

So we often rely on half-remembered tales and hole-ridden recollections from the people who were actually there (or the people they told. Which, yes, takes everything to a whole other level of fuzziness).

With all of that in mind, it’s hard to say exactly how the first kiss-in came about.

What we do know is that the first documented kiss-ins took place in New York City in 1970. But, it’s unclear whether or not the smooching was pre-planned, or simply a spontaneous, in-the-moment burst of lusty feelings (I mean, protesting doesn’t make me feel particularly horny, but whatever floats your boat).

From here activists started planning deliberate kiss-ins, rallying crowds to gather and get a little amorous for the cause. Though it doesn’t provide a lot of detail, Marc Stein’s ‘Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement’ references a kiss-in that was staged in a New York bar which had thrown out two men for kissing.

And, on the other side of the US, a group of lesbian activists staged a kiss-in at a Los Angeles restaurant that had threatened to eject two women that were holding holds there (side note: why did the hand-holding-in never take off?).

After this, the tactic went global, with kiss-ins reported in Canada, the UK, and Australia throughout the ‘70s.

Why It Works

In a culture that treats queerness as something to be shunned and ashamed of, a kiss-in confronts this prejudice head on. It reminds people that we are human — capable of intimacy, tenderness, and connection.

The beauty of it is that there’s no violence. No shouting. No smashed windows.

Just kissing.

The act is peaceful. But, at the same time, it’s deeply confrontational. It unsettles those tightly-buttoned-up conservative housewives from suburbia. It sparks debate. It draws cameras. It makes people pay attention.

And it starts the conversation.

Alongside this, there’s also something hugely important about the act of queer folks reclaiming space with our bodies.

For many taking part, this is their very first public display of affection after a lifetime of ‘toning it down’. Maybe you remember your own first time: the nerves, the quick glance around to see who was watching, the rush of it all?

To summon the courage to kiss in public means peeling back layers of shame and years of social conditioning. And, in doing that, something shifts. It’s scary. But it’s also freeing.

The HIV/AIDS Crisis

After a bit of a lull in the late ‘70s the kiss-in really came in to its own during the 1980s at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

At first, the virus was branded the ‘gay cancer,’ and no one came to help. Governments stalled, the media sneered, and the public looked the other way. So we grieved. We organised. We got angry.

And the kiss-in became the perfect tool for cutting through the indifference.

By publicly showing queer love, protestors dismantled the idea that we were shameful or untouchable. This message was especially important at a time when even hugging someone with AIDS was seen as dangerous by a wilfully ignorant public.

Modern-Day Kiss-Ins

Kiss-ins have fallen in and out of fashion over the decades. As queer visibility has grown (in some places, at least), they don’t always pack the same punch they once did. But that doesn’t mean they’ve lost their power entirely.

They still crop up when needed. And they’re still the perfect way to show we’re not going anywhere. Some recent-ish examples include:

📍2019 – Lenzburg, Switzerland: a kiss-in was held after a daycare refused to enrol twin 3-year-old boys because their dads were a gay couple (apparently the daycare’s director was worried that the boys would be ostracised, and so…. ostracised them?).

📍 2022 – Mexico: a smoochy protest successfully pressured an amusement park to revise its policy on ‘affectionate behaviour’ after a queer couple was reprimanded by security (despite straight couples being left unbothered).

📍2016 – London, UK: dozens of same-sex couples smooched their way through a mass kiss-in at a supermarket after a gay couple was asked to leave for holding hands (my favourite part of this story? After the couple complained about it on social media, the supermarket offered them a £10 voucher as an apology. £10! Ridiculous!)

And Now The Straights Are Getting In On The Action Too?

Sigh. Yes, as with most of the great things the queer community has created, it was only a matter of time before the straights got their grubby hands on it. But, hey, I can hardly blame them for pinching a winning strategy.

For example, in Kerala, India, the ‘Kiss of Love’ protests took off in 2014 in response to rising ‘moral policing’, which saw couples being harassed or arrested for public displays of affection. And in Santiago, Chile, ‘Kiss-Party’ protests became part of a broader movement calling out the government’s failure to fund public education.

One Final Snog

A kiss-in may not solve all the world’s problems, but it’s one hell of a way to make a statement. And, if you’re really canny about it, it’s also a great way to squeeze in a first date while fighting for a cause you believe in.

Now if only the guy I kissed at last year’s kiss-in would text me back...