For Huffington Post contributor Danielle Moodie-Mills, Time magazine's recent cover, featuring two white gay couples kissing, is more than provocative; it's regressive in the fight for legitimizing marriage equality.
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For decades, our allies and those of us within the gay and transgender community have tried desperately to move the conversation about LGBT equality out of the bedroom and instead towards the everyday life experiences of LGBT people. TIME had many options available to showcase the gay community — a wedding photo, folks holding hands, two people staring lovingly into each other's eyes, etc. Yet they chose two lip-locking white couples instead. Sure, this is the same magazine that brought us the woman breastfeeding her toddler on the cover, but my God, can we show no diversity of experience — let alone race?
The gay and transgender community has long had a race problem, meaning that the only people until recently we have seen as "talking heads" for the community have largely been white men and a few women. To continue to promote this idea through images on the cover of TIME magazine is not just insensitive, it's also irresponsible. Once again the media is perpetuating who they think gay people are — young, white, hipsters and not the reality of our rainbow.
In the Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook world in which we live, images are more important than ever — they speak volumes about our politics and our culture.
Read Danielle Moodie-Mills' entire piece at the Huffington Post.
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