Marriage Equality USA

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The Loving Quilt

quitls.jpgThe Loving Quilt was a project comprised of written stories and photographs of Marriage Equality USA members and their families, sewn together by MEUSA volunteers. Over the years the Loving Quilt developed into an ongoing exhibit called The Loving Quilt 2010: A People's Living History and Herstory - of Marriage Equality & Family Justice Movements. The exhibit was a project of Marriage Equality USA in collaboration with numerous creative individuals and community, state and national organizations. Maya Scott-Chung served as the Creative Director and Curator of The Loving Quilt 2010, which toured extensively and was displayed at events around the country.

The Quilt continued to evolve and eventually included a Loving Quilt On-Site SOLIDARITY Quilt creation,"Do I Look Illegal?" A Loving Quilt panel and digital quilt was developed in solidarity with people everywhere who experienced racial profiling, racist and anti-immigrant harassment and criminalization that kept us from having our families reflected, respected and protected. Scott-Chung combined work she was doing with StoryCorps and some of that work was incorporated into The Loving Quilt 2010.

The project, originally called the Marriage Equality Movement Family Story Quilt, was created in 2006 by former MEUSA Parents Community Liaison Maya Scott-Chung as part of her Masters in Public Health/ Community Health Education Thesis at San Francisco State University. It was premiered at San Francisco City Hall on National Freedom to Marry Day in February 2007, honoring the historic 2004 Winter of Love and the 40th anniversary of the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court Loving v. Virginia decision.

Marriage Equality USA is working to digitalize the Loving Quilt so that individual panels may be viewed here.

For more in-depth history of The Loving Quilt, read the April 2010 Bay Area Reporter article feature The LOVING QUILT.