Gay Couple Goes Viral After Re-creating 24-Year-Old Pride Photo
A gay couple from Tampa, Fla., who shared photos of themselves recreating a 24-year-old photo of them celebrating Pride, is going viral this week.
After meeting in 1992, Nick Cardello, 54, and Kurt English, 52, have been together for 25 years and are now married. For their 25th anniversary, the couple celebrated by attending the Equality March in Washington, D.C., last weekend, BuzzFeed reports.
Cardello told the website that in the days leading up to the march, he started sharing "more affectionate" photos of himself and his partner on Facebook. One photo was from 1993, when the men attended the March on Washington. The pic shows Cardello kissing English on the cheek.
"Most of [the photos] have been kind of generic -- a lot of people get kind of sensitive to seeing images of gay men kissing, so I've always resisted posting them on social media," Cardello told BuzzFeed.
He added that it was "important for people to see that image" this year, saying, "It's who we are."
When the men attended the most recent march in D.C., the couple decided to recreate the photo, standing in the same location on the National Mall. Soon after, Cardello shared the side-to-side photos on social media and, unsurprisingly, it went viral.
Twitter user @tagyourheathen shared the photos with the message "it's just a phase." It has been liked more than 635,000 times and retweeted over 162,000 times.
Cardello told BuzzFeed the couple was "amused" at their photos gaining attention but it's the response people had to the images that struck them.
"But when we started reading the comments and were tuned into what it meant to people ... that was really touching," he said. "What's interesting to see from the photos that have gone viral are the comments from the youth. They don't see many photos of gay couples getting old together."
"They're tagging their significant others, saying 'This could be us'. That was really cute," he added.
Cardello also told BuzzFeed: "Being more public, it becomes not such a big deal. My concern is with LGBTQ suicide rates. If they can't relate to people, they feel isolated. It's important for these images to be out there."
Cardello reiterated his feelings when speaking with The New York Daily News.
"We could never have imagined the incredible response to this that we've received," he told the newspaper. "We were deeply touched by people's personal stories and comments from around the world about the challenges that they experience in their personal lives and cultures.
"Many times, we've been moved to tears by reading the comments," he added. "There have been so many supportive comments, like 'Relationship Goals,' and 'Look how old they got,' which I laughed at, we were thinking, 'Yes, you too will get old!'