A photo of two gay fathers and their daughters has gone viral on the Internet.
The photo, posted on the Instagram account KordalenKaleb, shows two black men doing their daughters’ hair and getting them ready for school.
The caption reads:
“Being fathers is getting our daughters up at 5:30 a.m., making breakfast, getting them dressed for school and putting them on a bus by 6:30. This is a typical day in our household. It’s not easy but we enjoy every moment and every minute of it.”
The photo has more than 14,000 likes on Instagram, but has reportedly sparked a social media debate with people asking where children's mother was and making unseemly remarks about gay couples and African American gay couples. Many of those comments were later removed, according to Mused Magazine.
In response to the negative, and positive, feedback on their photo, Kordale, who’s from Chicago, and Kaleb, from Atlanta, sent this statement to the Huffington Post.
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“As far as the positive; yes we are two gay men with three kids who have no problem with preparing them for their education every morning; that comes with anything and everything they may need for school,” they said. “Our kids are blessed to have three parents (Kordale, Kaleb and their Mother) who love, care and support them in every decision they have made and will continue to make as they get older. We are blessed to have the ability to provide for them in ways that a lot of people cannot for their family, which ultimately makes us happy knowing that they don't want for much! Our main objective as parents is to provide, love, educate, support, encourage, and love some more.
“In regard to the negative, people fail to realize that we are people too with kids who love us,” the statement continued. “We do what is necessary for them to succeed in this ever-changing world but it's sad that we're discriminated against because of our sexuality and/or what we do behind closed doors -- which is no one's business. In the same breath, we take all of what's been said in stride. The picture was put out on social media for an opinion so we can't be mad when people give just that: an opinion. People tend to think that gay people cannot raise their children to be heterosexuals. Instead, they have derogatory thoughts of us "tainting" our children or "confusing them" with what society sees deems as wrong an unmanly because we're gay. But this is all comical because people forget where a lot of gays come from: a heterosexual household.”
This isn’t the first time a photo of this nature has taken the Internet by storm.
"Don't get me wrong here -- it's a very cute picture, and it's cool when people say so," Doyin Richards wrote in a blog post about the social media flurry. "However, I start to get a little uncomfortable when people want to start planning parade routes for me because of it."
Richards set up a camera and took a photo of himself combing one daughter's hair, with another infant daughter strapped to his chest, to show off to his wife his multitasking abilities. The couple got a good laugh from the picture, Richards said in the blog post. But he did not think it would go viral once he posted it to Facebook and Twitter, he wrote.
