The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands is a micronation established as a symbolic political protest by a group of gay rights activists based in southeast Queensland, Australia. Declared in 2004 in response to the Australian government's refusal to recognise same-sex marriages, it was founded on a group of uninhabited islets on the Great Barrier Reef. It is an expression of queer nationalism.
Read more about Gay And Lesbian Kingdom Of The Coral Sea Islands: History, Economy and Tourism
Famous quotes containing the words gay, lesbian, kingdom, coral, sea and/or islands:
“Whan that the firste cok hath crowe, anoon
Up rist this joly lovere Absolon,
And him arrayeth gay at point devis.
But first he cheweth grain and licoris,
To smellen sweete, er he hadde kembd his heer.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 13:44.
“Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! Now I hear them—ding-dong bell.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening. Water ran down hill and birds nested.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“we are so many
and many within themselves
travel to far islands but no one
asks for their story....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)