What We Love: Marriage Equality Pendant
We’ve heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve, but thanks to loveandpride, you can also wear it around your neck. Earlier this week, the new Marriage Equality Pendant was introduced at a special event to benefit Marriage Equality USA. Not only does the sleek new jewelry piece express support for same-sex marriage rights – 10 percent ($39 each) benefits the organization, which has been on the forefront of the fight for equal rights for same-sex couples across the country.
The pendant features Marriage Equality USA’s logo engraved on military dog-tag-style pendants made of stainless steel. You can even have the pendant engraved, say, with the initials of you and your loved one for an extra $10.
“loveandpride has a passionate history advocating marriage equality,” says loveandpride’s chief designer and co-founder Udi Behr (we saw him last season on The Real L Word). “We’re thrilled to help supporters donate to Marriage Equality USA by wearing activist jewelry that symbolizes how it takes two halves to make something whole.”
The two matching tags symbolize couplehood – with each person wearing one of the two tags. It’s also meant to invoke the success of overturning the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.
“From recent endorsements by President Obama, Vice President Biden and General Colin Powell to North Carolina’s oppressive and undemocratic ban on all kinds of legal same-sex unions, full marriage equality rights for LGBT Americans has rocketed to become the dominant social issue of our time,” says Marriage Equality USA Co-President Cathy Marino-Thomas. “Visually declaring your support for marriage equality to friends, family and strangers by wearing the Marriage Equality Pendant will spur conversation, change minds and accelerate momentum towards marriage equality for everyone. It’s both a fashion and a social statement, and it works.”
Over the years, loveandpride has designed speciality jewelry for a variety of LGBT causes – like the Erase Hate pendant for the Matthew Shepard Foundation and the Love and Equality pendant for HRC. It’s celebrating its seventh anniversary by donating money to openly gay candidates and marriage equality supporters just in time for New York City’s Pride Parade on June 24.
To date, loveandpride has raised $385,000 to help the LGBT community since 2005.
Click here to make that number grow in this election year.
