Hello there, hope this is the right place to ask. I've been seeing this photo around the internet, mostly on tumblr and pinterest, always being called a "1950s lesbian wedding". I tried doing reverse image searches to find the source to see if it's true, but nothing comes up with any legitimate information behind it. All the online instances I can find are from the last five years and on personal sites and blogs.
As a member of the LGBT community, I would love for this to be a real lesbian couple, however something tells me not all is as it seems. I looked closely at the image and it doesn't seem to be photoshopped, though the fact that I can't seem to find an original source is suspicious.
Could this be a bride kissing her mother, sister, or friend, as some kind of custom or different kind of acceptable social interaction during the 1940s-50s (when I'm guessing it was taken, based on the clothing)? Why is the woman in the back also apparently wearing white? The confirmed images I've seen of early "lesbian weddings" and ceremonies all seem to be in homes or private places, as it obviously was not accepted in those times, though this appears to be in a public place (not too many background details to confirm, though).
It just comes off as a strange photo to me. Could it be altered? Can anyone tell me what really might be happening here? (If anyone manages to find the source too, I would be very grateful!)
edit: As a lesbian myself I am very well aware that this is not an actual legal wedding between two women and that was not possible at that time, however same sex couples would sometimes hold private ceremonies for a few friends or something of that ilk to demonstrate their love and lifelong commitment. Please stop telling me that same-sex marriage was illegal at this time lol
A few things:
EDIT: I recalled something else of relevance to the discussion-- the "Boston Marriage."
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, women in the USA and some European countries were reported to cohabitate without any men, financially independent of them. Some of these women had inherited money, some had been widowed, etc., but the common variable was a household of women, usually upper-middle class, living independently of any men. [x] (https://books.google.ca/books?id=_nyHS4WyUKEC&pg=PT119&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)-- Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, Volumes 1-2
History has a tendency of desexualizing or eliminating female desire, particularly female same-sex desire; as a result, it can be difficult to discern which among the Boston Marriages were genuinely lesbian relationships and which were simply two women living together. Given the strongly patriarchal context of society, especially before women's suffrage, it is not inconceivable that women were living together simply to be more independent. That being said, we can safely assume that at least some of the women were lesbians as we understand the term today.
There are also other prominent examples of this type of relationship, like the [Ladies of Llangollen] (http://www.bucknell.edu/script/upress/book.asp?id=3961) who lived together, were unmarried, and occasionally dressed in male attire in Ireland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These women were much more strongly coded as "lesbian" as we understand it today; however, we have no evidence to suggest they marked their relationship with ceremony in a public fashion.
Finally, I think in keeping with your original image, it's important to remember that our collective understanding of marriage has changed significantly. Prior to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, the images of marriage-- white dresses, virgin brides-- would have chafed dramatically against lesbians' own understandings of themselves and their identities. To be a bride was to be a blushing virgin to be taken by a man, to join families, to become a mother, etc. Think of all the stories about brash women rejecting marriage. It's not that they rejected love, or commitment, but the idea that they were going to bow and scrape and be a mother and "honour and obey."
In other words, any woman brave enough to consider herself a lesbian in the 1950s would almost assuredly not wish to mark her public commitment by "selling out" to society's ideas of brides, virgins, women, etc. (Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture.)
So, to conclude: this is almost assuredly an image of a woman entering a heterosexual marriage and tenderly-- but non-sexually-- kissing a friend.
