On Becoming Appalachian Moonshine.

This essay explores strategies of celebratory performative protest in support of ecological entities in the contemporary United States. Drawing on the work of Linda Montano, Stephens and Sprinkle originally launched their wedding performances as a seven-year project to protest the prohibition of same-sex marriages under U.S. federal law. After three years and three human centered weddings they came to realize that these performances needed to explore larger issues than the right to join together two human beings in matrimony. Proposing to extend questions of legal rights to the Earth, this essay traces ways in which this performative protest project engages and critically brings together different domains of exclusion. Drawing on the work of Linda Montano, Guillermo Gómez Peña, Revered Billy, and Fluxus within performance studies, the wedding projects joining of sexual and environmental rights, what they term “eco-sexuality,” seeks to contribute to the opening up of spaces to highlight and question relationships, connections and possibilities of contemporary illegibility within the intimate and familiar every day context of the wedding ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]