UK prison has inmate/same-sex wedding

Two women inmates have tied the knot in what is thought to be Britain's first lesbian prison wedding.

Sara Crane, a convicted killer, and drug dealer Joanne Davies who are both 31, married in a private ceremony earlier this month. The service was conducted by an official from Guildford Register Office at Send Prison in Surrey, The Sun reported.


Dramatization of the actual event

Prison governors are required to consider requests from gay couples who wish to enter civil partnerships. Crane was jailed for life for murder in 2003 and Davies was jailed for two and a half years for intent to supply drugs.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We cannot comment on individual offenders held in custody at HMP Send. "Offenders are entitled to apply to the Governor to register a civil partnership in prison under the Civil Partnership Act 2004, so long as certain criteria defined under the Act are met."

I'm not sure why anyone would want to spend their life with a convicted murderer or a drug dealer, but...okay? Good luck to them? They are in prison, so it's not like they're known for good decisions.

Make good decisions this weekend friends! Don't drink and marry.

xo,

Kay Banks

First public gay wedding in China

I am terrified of China. I love their food, and a few of their people, and I hope to see China for myself someday, but the government scares me. A LOT. With the scary overlords in mind, I think that this takes balls. Four of them, to be precise:

According to China’s state-run newspaper, China Daily, on January 3, 2010, Zeng Anquan and Pan Wenjie had a wedding at a gay bar in Chengdu of southwest China’s Sichuan Province. The couple regrets that they cannot receive a marriage certificate from the Chinese government, but the fact that the state-run newspaper has given their wedding publicity shows a movement toward that goal.



Neither of the men who were wed had family in attendance, but they were surrounded by gay friends. Pan’s former girlfriend volunteered to be Pan’s bridesmaid at the wedding. “We are no longer hiding any more. The wedding is our happiest and most precious moment,” Zeng told the China Daily.

The government has made no official response to the wedding.

Huang Zhiling and Zhang Ao report, “The country has roughly 30 million homosexuals – 20 million gay men and the remaining, lesbians, according to estimates by Zhang Beichuan, a professor at Qingdao University and an expert on homosexuality and HIV/AIDS prevention.”

When I was studying the rhetoric of gender years ago, a professor told me that there was not even a word for “gay” in the Mandarin (Chinese) language. This is a big leap, and I am encouraged that China allows gay bars to be open, and that the Chinese state-run newspaper is making an announcement of lifelong love between two men so public.

Good luck to them [run for your bloody lives!]

Kay Banks