We just got this new photo from one of our US Finalists, Josh Robers, who will be representing his home town of Green Bay for the US Mr. Gay Competition in Hollywood October 25-28, 2007. Josh had his photo taken wearing his PINK BRACELET with Christine Quinn, the first openly gay Speaker of the City Council in NYC, which makes her the second most powerful politician in NYC behind the mayor. (she may be the next mayor of NYC!!!). Thanks to photographer Frank Lau for taking the photo and to Christine for wearing a PINK BRACELET, too.
3 comments:
I'm sorry, maybe I'm a purist but, to me, the pink bracelet should be ALL about breast cancer. I lost my best friend and Aunt a few months ago to cancer that had started in her breasts. To make it all about "being gay is ok" is just not right. I am a Lesbian and have no problem with however homosexuals of whatever flavor want to express themselves but, this is just too much! The pink ribbon should be able to translate easily to the pink band and should support breast cancer and nothing else...just as the blue ribbon supports the fight against child abuse and the yellow ribbon supports our troops.... If I've offended anyone...too bad!
Thanks for you post Deb,
I'm sorry for your losses.
I'm not sure if you are aware of the history of the color pink and the gay culture. During WWII gay men were taken to concentration camps and forced to wear pink triangle on their clothes. Pink has long been associated with the gay culture, much longer than the breast cancer campaign. To say that the Breast Cancer Campaign 'owns' the pink color is absurd. The yellow bracelet you mentioned was actually first used by Lance armstrong and the "Live Strong" campaign, now it is associated with the supporting the troops too. You have so perfectly made the point that there is room for both. Let's try and find commonality in all our communities and forge ahead with support for all worthy causes. Again, I am truly sorry for your losses.
As part of the team that came up with the PINK BRACELET Campaign, I wanted to acknowledge the "PINK" issue.
We were and remain excited about the idea, which originated from a brain-storming session. We thought of the color pink because it reprsented gay culture to us. Our frame of reference was completely based on the foundation described by nycjosh in his post.
Only later did we get several comments from friends asking about the possible conflict with the Breast Cancer Campaign. We certainly acknowlege the importance of that Campaign and I hope you can see that our intent was not to create conflict, but to acknowledge gay history.
We can debate the symbolism of "PINK" - and debate is almost always a good thing. Just to avoid a Campaign with negative baggage, we have actually thought of the idea of changing our Campaign to the LAVENDAR BRACELET once this current Competition cycle is over.
I plan to present that idea to our Board as soon as our volunteers are done with the heavy demands of our current production. Now, finding LAVENDAR yarn maybe an issue, but we might just dye our own and have something really new and unique.
Meanwhile, we encourage you to donate to our mission and you'll have a collector's item! I hope we can support both PINK causes and work to make this a better world for everyone.
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