Many students celebrate Valentine’s Day by eating candy and spending time with friends of the opposite sex.

Weinberg freshman David Sternberg spent the day exchanging marriage vows with another man while wearing a white wedding dress.

Sternberg and several other students participated in mock same-sex wedding ceremonies Monday at The Rock to demonstrate their support for gay marriage legislation.

“While we’re out here trying to have a good time, (the mock weddings) also have serious undertones,” Sternberg said at the demonstration. “There are serious inequalities that we’re trying to redress.”

The group was at The Rock from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and performed many same-sex wedding ceremonies with students who volunteered to participate.

To emphasize the discrimination gay men and lesbians experience from being barred from legalized marriage, students at the demonstration did not allow any heterosexual marriages.

“(We’re trying to) flip the whole idea of exclusion and get people who haven’t really thought of gay marriage before to realize how exclusive it really is,” said Medill sophomore Laura Hadden, an event participant.

The ceremonies included the traditional walk down the aisle, an exchange of rings, marriage vows and, for some, a kiss.

Event planners — who included members of Rainbow Alliance and NOWAR — also put up signs displaying distorted facts such as “90 percent of all child molestations are performed by heterosexuals.”

“(The signs) are just caricaturing a lot of the arguments that are used against homosexuals,” said Weinberg senior Lars Johnson, an event organizer.

The demonstration was held on Valentine’s Day because legends claim that St. Valentine rebelled against an earlier ban on marriage and secretly married Roman warriors to women.

Participants said the demonstration was a great way to protest a holiday that is geared toward heterosexual couples.

“(We wanted to) provide a place where homosexuals can freely show their love without being persecuted,” Johnson said.

Justin D’Ambrosio, a Weinberg freshman who walked by the demonstration on his way to class, said the event was overdone.

“The fact that they had signs up saying ‘heterosexuals suck’ and blatantly insulted heterosexuals was just absurd,” he said.

But Weinberg junior Kay Miller said the event effectively called attention to the issue of gay marriage .

“Sometimes,” she said, “you just need to throw (the issue) in people’s faces.”

Reach Allan Madrid at [email protected].