Toronto Police Officer Luke Watson: Pretty In Pink

How I missed this, I don’t know. I must be a Bad Gay, or at the very least, a Bad Gay Blogger.

Last Wednesday was the International Day of Pink — an event that occurs the second Wednesday of April, every year — where communities around the world, unite in celebrating diversity and raising awareness to stop homophobia, transphobia, transmisogyny, and all forms of bullying.

The International Day of Pink was started in Nova Scotia when two straight high school students saw a gay student wearing a pink shirt being bullied. Those two students intervened, but wanted to do more to prevent LGBTQ bullying, so they decided to buy pink shirts and then have everyone at school wearing pink in solidarity. That school took a stand and began working to end homophobic & transphobic bullying, and this year, well, it got even hotter, and cuter …

The Toronto Police force decided to take a stand against bullying as well, and it’s a novel approach. Toronto police officers Ryan Willmer and Luke Watson [above] were trying to raise awareness for the Day of Pink, so Officer Willmer went on Twitter and promised that his beefy, tattooed … and quite hot  … colleague Luke Watson would dye his hair pink if the post got 500 reTweets with the hashtag #stopbullyingnow and #dayofpink.

In an instant there were 560 reTweets and, well, Luke Watson, well, pardon the pun, dyed.

The two officers attended the Day of Pink rally at Forest Hills Collegiate Institute in Toronto and, along with their fellow officers, arrived in a pink police cruiser wearing pink T-shirts. It was such a hit, Willmer and Watson decided to step it up on Twitter by promising Watson would keep his pink hair for seven days with 1,000 reTweets and an additional day for every 100 reTweets on top of it — to date there have been more than 3000 reTweets.

One question, though … why didn’t Ryan Willmer dye his own hair pink?

“He lacks in the hair department, so I am the guinea pig.” — Luke Watson.

I guess a spray-painted pink scalp was out of the question? Still, I love this story; I love the police officers, and Ryan and Luke, taking such a bold, very public stance.

And I like the reminder — especially in light of recent events in Charleston —that not all police officers are bad; many, very many, do the right thing, and go above and beyond to serve and protect.

And, on a personally superficial and shallow note for Officer Watson:

"Cuff me, Officer, I've been a bad bad boy."

sources

Yahoo
Day of Pink