THE GUARDIAN: One dead, the other seriously injured in crash one month after moment of passion was controversially published in newspaper
Theirs was a kiss that stunned a conservative town. When a moment of passion between two men was published on a newspaper front page, it provoked fierce debate in one of South Africa's oldest communities.
In a single photograph Bjorn Czepan and Mark Dean Brown became unwitting symbols for tolerance and gay rights at the predominantly Afrikaner, rugby-playing Stellenbosch University.
Just a month later, there is a tragic postscript. Czepan is dead and Brown is critically ill in hospital after a car crash.
The students were involved in an accident in Woodstock, a suburb of Cape Town, last week, the Cape Times reported. Czepan, from Germany, was killed and Brown is now on a ventilator at the Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital.
The hospital said a third student, Brian Kline, was admitted late last Thursday night after the crash. Brown and Kline were critical but stable.
The Cape Town University couple's fleeting moment of fame came at last month's annual Soen in die Laan (Kiss in the Avenue) event at the nearby university, when lesbian and gay students decided to join the traditionally heterosexual event.
The photograph was published on the front page of the student newspaper Die Matie, triggering furious debate on social networking sites. Copies were torn up or defaced in protest but there were supportive comments from gay students. >>> David Smith | Thursday, September 09, 2010
