New Yorker article on a gay couple who were ordered to stop kissing on an airplane:
Shortly after takeoff, Varnier nodded off, leaning his head on Tsikhiseli. A stewardess came over to their row. “The purser wants you to stop that,” she said.
“I opened my eyes and was, like, ‘Stop what?’ ” Varnier recalled the other day.
“The touching and the kissing,” the stewardess said, before walking away.
Tsikhiseli and Varnier were taken aback. “He would rest his head on my shoulder or the other way around. We’d kiss—not kiss kiss, just mwah,” Tsikhiseli recalled, making a smacking sound.
In the row behind them were Leisner and Jackson. “They were like two lovebirds,” said Leisner, who is a classical guitarist. Frobes-Cross, a Columbia grad student who was sitting across the aisle, had overheard the stewardess’s decree, too. “First thing I catch is ‘You have to stop touching each other,’ ” he said. “And I’m, like, Whoa, that’s really weird.”
After discussing the issue further with the crew, the pilot of the plane told them that they needed to shut up or he would divert the plane. The airline officials also refused to speak to the when the plane landed.
The airline tried to claim that the policy was in place for all couples, but when people called in later to ask, they admitted that straight couples are not prohibited from kissing each other on the plane.
I would so be in trouble for this, because Stephanie and I hold hands and kiss all the time.
