Reactions to Gay fruit

                  For the past few weeks we have been working on our video project which has been an interesting experience. My group members and I have never attempted a task like this one and one of the hardest parts was coming up with an idea for the video. We ended up deciding to do a stop motion short film about same sex marriage, portrayed with fruit. This concept has gotten us some strange looks and I have to say most peoples reaction to it so far have been unexpected. From my time at EDSS I have noticed that there is a lot of homophobia among a large percentage of the students. This has been changing but a lot of people are openly against gay people and particularly gay marriage. Because of this, our film may be on the more controversial side when we present it in class but so far students reactions have been much more positive than I expected. For example, the other day when we were filming a scene of the oranges meeting, two grade 10 male students came up to us and asked what we were doing. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting them to say but when one said, “Why can’t gay people get married anyway? Its not bothering anyone, its there choice, I’m not gay but it doesn’t effect me at all, why can’t they be happy?” I was surprised. Then his friend responded with an extremely immature comment and called the boy a “homo”. They walked away arguing and I was impressed that this student stood up for himself and what he thought was right. Other students have been having similar reactions. Some think the video is a really cool idea; others ask why we would ever even think about doing our project on same sex marriage. I’ve realized that Elmira is a little less homophobic than I thought and more people have been on the gay rights side, but there is still a major problem with homophobia at our school. I hope this video continues to make people think about where they stand on same sex marriage and I hope more people realize that homophobia is not ok.