What image comes to mind when you think of marriage equality? Is it Edith Windsor, the 84-year old woman who brought the case against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), an elderly gay couple on their wedding day or a lesbian sailor embracing her partner in the Navy? It probably isn't a picture of two gay black dads getting their kids ready for school, and that's part of the problem.
Atlanta couple Kordale and Kaleb have been receiving a lot of attention after an Instagram photo of the pair helping their daughters with their morning routine went viral. As usual, some people have had bigoted responses, but more importantly the image brought to light the lack of representation of people, especially parents, of color in the conversation on marriage equality.
As Edward Williams writes for Policy Mic, "The experience of being a black gay male in the United States is, for me, best summarized as constantly standing in a crowded room and shouting 'ME, TOO,' at the top of my lungs hoping that someone, somewhere hears me." Williams continues, "Black gay men are almost wholly absent from the gay movement’s branding. Rarely do we see black gay men in the major corporate advertisements reaching out to the gay community, or the mainstream gay-rights movement's branding of itself. This needs to change."
Obviously, labels of race and sexual preference are reductive and can't begin to encapsulate a person as a whole, but if we're going to have a national conversation about something that so intimately affects a large group of people, it would behoove us to represent them all. And who doesn't think these guys, and their kids, are so damn adorable! Who would want to break up a family like this?
Image via Instagram
