Netizens outraged by moral policing, go on kissing spree

Thiruvananthapuram: Social media activists are on a kissing and hugging spree in protest against the Yuva Morcha's vandalism of a restaurant here upon complaints that came in after a television channel aired visuals of young couples and students inside it.

Many have posted photos of themselves kissing their partners to protest against moral policing. Sudeep KS, an activist and teacher at NIT, Kozhikode posted on his Facebook ID Sudeep Ben Adil Almithra, a photo of himself kissing his wife. Somy Solomon, a Tanzania-based Keralite social media activist, posted a photo of herself hugging her husband while Hasna Shahitha Gipsy posted a photo of herself kissing her female friend, challenging others to similarly take up the cause against moral policing.

Science writer Jeevan Job Thomas has, in a Facebook post, called upon young people to organise a public kissing protest in the state, giving other examples of this form of outcry.

Dozens of people congregated in the Turkish capital of Ankara last year to decry an announcement made by subway officials, asking passengers to 'act in accordance with moral rules', and kiss in public. When a Sainsbury's store in Bristol, England, disapproved of two lesbian women sharing a brief kiss, the students' union of the University of Sussex organised an event called the ‘big consensual kiss in’ at the store “to show that  they won’t accept homophobia in our society, and that we demand they do more”.

K A Shaji, a journalist, wrote on Facebook that it was fortunate that poet Octavio Paz was not born in Kerala for it was he who wrote, ‘To love is to battle, if two kiss the world changes.’