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.