Why Would This Gay Couple Have Any Problem With Anti-Gay Campaigners Using Their Picture?

Metro- When this picture was captured and made public in 2014, the couple it featured were keen to point out that it represented everything pride is about.

‘Love has no colour nor gender nor sexual preference. Love is unconditional’, new dads B.J Barone and Frankie Nelson were quoted as saying at the time as the image quickly went viral.

But now it has been hijacked by anti-gay campaigners, the very people who would disagree with that sentiment, and are now using it to promote literature admonishing same sex parenting.

Amongst others it has been used by Irish politician Mary E. Fitzgibbon on social media, while extreme right wing party Fratelli d’Italia have used it in posters.

Barone told BuzzFeed that he and his partner were shocked and upset when a cousin in Italy told them their photo was being used in this way, without permission.

‘They are campaigning that every child NEEDS a mother,’ he said.

‘They are using our picture to support their political agenda that we are denying our son Milo the right to a mother. Obviously this is a something we do not support or agree with.’




I am not going to pretend I am some marketing savant. I probably couldn't sell ice to a construction worker building a greenhouse in the middle of the Sahara if my life depended on it. With that said, I am in tune enough to know that when you sling mud it probably shouldn't be with the intent of drawing attention to the most glamorous aspects of that which you are trying to disparage. I understand that this homosexual couple probably doesn't want their family associated with homophobia, but I actually think this picture does more to cure homophobia than it does it promote it. I look at that picture and "this kid needs a mother" doesn't even register as a thought that people could possibly have. I realize that's because I am a rational, free thinking, accepting person, but isn't that who an anti-gay campaign is pandering to? The people that are against homosexuality are always going to be against homosexuality. They don't need a single snapshot to solidify their beliefs. It's those that are on the fence that need to be persuaded and this picture is only pushing those people in the wrong direction. 

​Seriously, this picture is like the most adorable thing I have ever seen. I am straight as an arrow and this picture makes me want to take a dip in the non-gender specific dating pool just so I can one day hope to recreate it. I saw this picture and needed to remind myself that a woman is necessary in the birthing process, because these two teary eyed lovers embracing their child is preferable to any scene that includes a sweaty, exhausted post-birth mother. This picture does as much for the political agenda of overly conservative douchebags as the photo of the American flag being raised on Iwo Jima does for anti-war protests. You want to convince me that a child needs a mother? Show me a picture of a pair of balls bouncing off a dude's hairy ass. Show me a 2 dicks-1 cup video. Show me a guy kissing another guy's neck as he gives him a reach-around. Don't show me two people celebrating the miracle of child birth because - outside of the part where a baby is forced through a WOMAN'S birth canal - that's the most beautiful thing on Earth.