US school ‘Cutest Couple’ prize goes to a gay pair

By Barry Duke • 10 years ago

Jun
2013

WITH so many examples religiously-motivated hatred aimed at gay people – here is just one shocking example – it’s nice to see be able to commend an individual or organisation for showing tolerance.

Today, we’d like to salute a US school that placed a picture in its yearbook of a pair that one its “Cutest Couple” award. A GAY couple – Brad Taylor and Dylan Meehan.

Unfortunately, the Huffington Post neglected to identify the school and where it’s located.

The pair came to international attention when an 18-year-old named Chelsea posted a photo of her classmates to her Tumblr blog this week. She did not anticipate the incredible response it would receive – within 24 hours, the entry had been shared almost 100,000 times.

Her caption read:

Two of my best friends won Cutest Couple of our senior class. First time in my school history a same sex couple has even been able to run for this category, not to mention winning it. So proud of them, and my school.

No one was more surprised, however, than the couple themselves. In an email to The Huffington Post, Taylor and Meehan shared their reaction to the image – and relationship – being shared around the world.

This whole thing has been a bit surreal for us because we have been raised to believe that love is love. We never realized that our happiness and openness would inspire so many individuals. The support we have received from our family, friends, and even strangers has led us to believe that our affection for each other is normal … When we started dating a year [ago], the thought of a photo of us traveling throughout the world would be a bit frightening, but now we are proud to be part of the LGBT community.

The Huff Post said:

Not only are they the cutest, but if there were a ‘most inspiring couple’ award, we’d venture to guess that these guys would be a shoo-in.

The Author

Barry Duke

Veteran journalist Barry Duke, born in South Africa in 1947, settled in the UK in 1973, where he became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement and gay rights organisations. A militant atheist, he joined the National Secular Society (NSS) and was a co-founder in 1979 of the Gay Humanist Group which changed its name to the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association in 1987. In 2017 he was handed a Lifetime Achievement award by the NSS for his "spirited opposition to religious intolerance and irrationality" in his roles as a free speech advocate and his work as editor of the Freethinker and the Pink Triangle Trust website. In 2022, when the Freethinker suddenly went "woke", he was summarily sacked for being too aggressively atheistic. In 2017 he was married to his partner of 25 years, Marcus Robinson, in Gibraltar. The couple live in Benidorm, Spain.