On November 4, 2008 Proposition 8 passed in California, amending the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. The defeat provoked a groundswell of initiative within the GLBT community at a grassroots level, with many new political and protest organizations being formed in response.

The NOH8 Campaign is a photographic silent protest created by celebrity photographer Adam Bouska (http://www.bouska.net) and partner Jeff Parshley in direct response to the passage of Proposition 8. Photos feature subjects with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop 8 and similar legislation around the world, with “NOH8″ painted on one cheek in protest.

Two years since its inception, the NOH8 Campaign has grown to over 8,000 faces and continues to grow at an exponential rate. The campaign began with portraits of everyday Californians from all walks of life and soon rose to include politicians, military personnel, newlyweds, law enforcement, artists, celebrities, and many more.

The NOH8 Campaign has received overwhelming support from around the world, appearing on various local and national news programs and publications. The images are currently being used on various social networking sites to spread the message of equality, predominantly Facebook and Twitter. Eventually the images are expected to be compiled for a large-scale media campaign.

Start to finish, the photoshoot was a kick-ass experience.  The official photographs will be ready in three or four weeks, but for now, I’ll give you a little teaser.  First up, here’s Adam himself:

And here’s some behind the scene photos of our shoot, including me and Chris, and our new friend, O.T. Porter, who posed with his father’s war medals. 

If Adam and the NOH8 Campaign ever roll into your city (or neighboring state), don’t miss it. 

“…to say that Bryan is a gay poet is like calling Walt Whitman a gay poet or Shakespeare an English poet.” – Ray Sharp, in a review of Adam on Amazon.com.

“…Poets will write about what informs their life the most, obviously, but I think it’s also important to grow beyond a single definition, to be multi-faceted. I would call Bryan a poet who is gay rather than a gay poet (and hope he’s okay with that), because if he were confined to one label, it would restrict the depth of what he could write about.” – Joseph Harker, in a review of Adam from Naming Constellations.

If you do a Google search for “Bryan Borland,” odds are that it won’t be long before you see the word “gay.” I’ll admit that the association is of my own creation. When I began sharing my work online, I made the conscious decision to tag many of my poems as “gay poetry.”  My most-used bio line includes “gay poet” before my name.

Initially, I labeled myself a gay poet to assist in finding my target audience. As a young reader, I hungered intensely for gay-themed poetry, and when I’d find it, I’d devour it.  The problem was that libraries and bookstores didn’t have areas designated for gay poetry, and, even with the advent of the Internet, a search for gay poet often produced few results.  I know now that void is because there aren’t many people writing today who wholeheartedly embrace the label of gay poet, even if their poetry is primarily gay (and that’s not meant as a criticism).  If you know where to look, you can find us. But you have to know where to look.

I wrote Adam, in part, because of something my friend Philip F. Clark captured perfectly when he said, “Someone, years from now, is waiting to read you. Write for yourself, but write for him, too.” Joseph Harker expanded on this when he wrote, “if some nervous teenager struggling to cope with who he is, to have someone understand his identity crisis, reads this collection and feels just a little more secure, that is a small miracle all its own, drawn from and given to a person.” How to help those now and yet to come find Adam if it weren’t labeled gay poetry? If I weren’t labeled a gay poet?  Even aside from Adam, what Philip and Joseph identify is a large reason for why I write at all.

I have two major projects in the works, both at opposite ends of the equivalent of the Kinsey scale of poetic homosexuality. On the gay side, there’s The Hanky Code with Stephen S. Mills. On the other end of the spectrum is my follow-up to Adam, Dark Horse, which deals with the loss of my father. Both will be marketed in two very different ways, one with Bryan Borland, the Gay Poet, and the other with Bryan Borland, the Poet. The Bryan you see in The Hanky Code will be a very different Bryan than the fatherless son of Dark Horse.  Or will he be different at all?

In the end, I go back to Maya Angelou, the first poet I loved.  Is she an African-American poet?  A female poet?  It can’t be disputed that a good portion of her work deals with these two facets of her being.  Or is she a poet, and a damn good one at that?  The answer is that she is all of these things. She is what we interpret her to be as I am what you interpret me to be. She is the poet we need her to be for the moment in our lives when we read “Phenomenal Woman” or “Caged Bird” or “Still I Rise.”   I am the poet you need me to be when you stumble across this blog, or pick up Adam, or try to understand a person who is different from you, but still the same.  You see, Maya Angelou said that “we are more alike than unalike,” and she was right. Because more than half of my audience does not identify as LGBT, yet you still come, yet you still comment and purchase and read.

I’m the Bryan Borland you want me to be.

And I’m cool with that.

- Bryan