As many people saw, in April’s Fools’ Day The AEGEEan uploaded an article about a LGBTQ marriage during the Agora Patra. This was our prank (there wasn’t a way Miguel wears a suite!) for the 1st of April.
We want to thank those of you who sent us your best wishes, and I really wish that it was true the fact that I can one day marry my other half during an AEGEE event (and I can admit that I want to do it if I ever got married).
We thought to do it because a wedding during an Agora is always a great idea, but an LGBTQ one would send a very strong message; we wrote the article thinking how nice and cute this could be, especially in a extremely homophobic country as Greece. And I’m saying this while being a LGBTQ activist, and an agender person who likes girls- people of the same sex with me.
Lia and I are considering to proceed in this symbolic action, because we think that AEGEE have to show more clearly its alliance to the LGBTQ community. It will be more symbolic in a country such as Greece, where we are striving everyday to get our fundamental rights of visibility and civil union recognised. Keep it in mind that the European Court of Human Rights has already condemned Greece because of the exclusion of LGBTQ couples of the civil union law.
The LGBTQ team of the Human Rights Working Group is already working in our organisation, and this is a good beginning.But we have to admit that we can’t work just a few AEGEEans in this topic. So, we are inviting everyone join the team and help in our work, which is to give more relevance in LGBTQ rights within the network . It’s a fact that we have to become more active as an organisation but, even if it was a joke, we made people think about a topic that in some countries it’s a taboo.
If someone was offended, we are really sorry, as it was not our intention. Of course, we wanted our article to be more than a prank. It might have begun in the brainstorming for a joke, but for us it was something serious. We have a dream of this being possible all over Europe in the future. And like many other things, we hope it can start even before within AEGEE, with LGBTQ couples being out and proud in our network.
Written by Mitsaki (Dimitra Amorgianou), AEGEE-Kastoria