Mexican President Felipe Calderon is
walking back a comment perceived as homophobic.
During a government sponsored breast
cancer awareness event held on Tuesday, Calderon made sure attendees
didn't get the wrong idea about the pink ribbon he was wearing.
“I wore this little pink-colored
ribbon. And don't you go thinking it means anything else,”
Calderon snidely quipped to a bit of laughter from the crowd.
“Because the color pink is a distinctive color used during the
month of October to gather efforts to fight breast cancer – and not
only among women.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of
this page.)
Within hours, the 49-year-old Calderon
apologized for the remark.
“I reiterate my profound respect
toward sexual diversity and my rejection against all discrimination,”
he tweeted to his more than 1 million followers.
Writing at Blabbeando.blogspot.com,
Andres Duque suggested that Calderon's apology was insincere. He
noted that Calderon's administration had filed a legal challenge to
Mexico City's groundbreaking gay marriage law. The country's Supreme
Court not only upheld the law's constitutionality, it also ruled that
all
Mexican states must recognize the legal marriages of gay and lesbian
couples originating from the city-state of Mexico City.