Same Sex Marriage Just Won't Fly

About

Same Sex Marriage Just Won't Fly is a name given to a political cartoon by cartoonist Pat Cross (of "Cancel Culture Gun" fame) in which he attempts to illustrate that homosexual marriage will be unsuccessful by drawing a regular plane with each wing labeled "man" and "woman" and a second plane with both wings on its left side labeled "man." Once the cartoon was posted to Twitter in mid-July 2022, it was widely parodied, with some exploitable and object labeling variations. Others noted that planes with similar designs as the "gay marriage plane" have been engineered and are capable of flight.

Origin

On July 18th, 2022 political cartoonist Pat Cross^[1] posted a cartoon attempting to illustrate how same-sex marriage is doomed to be unsuccessful by drawing a regular plane with each wing labeled "man" and "woman" and a second plane with both wings on its left side labeled "man" (shown below).

On July 27th, Twitter user @mattxiv^[2] posted a screenshot of the cartoon as it appeared on the National Catholic Register,^[3] which added the title "Same-sex Marriage Just Won't Fly." The tweet gained over 34,000 retweets and 492,000 likes in two days (shown below).

Spread

Over the following two days, the political cartoon inspired many parodies on Twitter. Several users turned the picture into an exploitable, adding new, labeled wings to the plane. For example, on July 28th, 2022, Twitter user @datagurl77^[4] posted an edit of a "polycule" plane (shown below, left). User @BadRaccShow^[5] posted a Loss edit of the planes (shown below, right). Both saw little engagement over the coming days with roughly 20 likes each.

Others made jokes about the cartoon's central premise. Many users joked about how a biplane would fit into Cross's attempted message. For example, on July 28th, Twitter user @damnyouwillis^[6] posted a picture of a biplane, insinuating bisexuality is also a viable option to "making marriage fly" (shown below, left), gaining over 60 retweets and 280 likes in one day. Others noted that the F-15, a plane that can technically operate with only one wing,^[8] still flies in the context of the cartoon. Twitter user @LiaOfTheBay^[7] joked, "F-15 confirmed gay," gaining over 13 retweets and 65 likes in 12 hours (shown below, right).

On July 28th, Twitter user @PlaneyBoys posted a video in which they recreated Cross's "same-sex marriage" plane in a flight simulator and demonstrated that it was able to fly successfully, gaining over 17,000 retweets and 88,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below).

https://t.co/4C3AZMlyjd pic.twitter.com/gHNGnm9vgl

— plane (@PlaneyBoys) July 28, 2022

Various Examples

Search Interest

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External References