About

Be Gay Do Crime is a catchphrase and protest slogan used by activists, members and allies of the LGBTQIA+ community, promoting freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or being non-cisgender.

Origin

While the phrase existed prior to its appearance online, the earliest known reference was posted by Instagram ^[1] user @absentobject on September 15th, 2016. The post features the words "Be Gay. Do Crime." spraypainted onto a wall in Marseille, France (shown below).

Spread

Three days later, the Tumblr ^[2] account queergraffiti featured the photograph, which received more than 58,000 notes in three years.

On January 13th, 2018, Twitter ^[3] user @AliceAvizandum tweeted the image along with a piece of stencil graffiti quoting Mark Fisher. They captioned the image "two kinds of leftists." The tweet received more than 1,900 likes and 630 retweets in a year and a half (shown below, left).

Several months later, on June 2nd, Twitter^[4] user @ioascarium tweeted an adaptation of a Thomas Nast political cartoon, replacing the sign a skeleton is holding with the phrase. The tweet received more than 13,000 likes and 6,400 retweets in about one year (shown below, center).

Two days later, Twitter^[5] isislovecruft tweeted, "just saw two teenage girls hop the bart turnstile and run up the stairs and start making out and i couldn’t resist the urge to shout BE GAY DO CRIMES and they raised their fists and shouted back STONEWALL WAS A RIOT so i am informing you that the kids are in fact alright." The tweet received more than 69,000 likes and 12,000 retweets in one year (shown below, right).

On August 10th, 2018, Gay Star News^[6] published a history of the slogan.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References