Parkland survivors Cameron Kasky and David Hogg are going to prom together
Cameron Kasky and David Hogg have driven the internet wild with a picture of them embracing and the simple message: “Prom 2018.”
Along with bisexual activist Emma Gonzalez, the Parkland shooting survivors have been at the forefront of the Never Again movement since the February 14 shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, which left 17 dead.
Their influence was even acknowledged with their inclusion in the TIME 100 list on April 19, with a tribute written by President Barack Obama.
And now, Kasky and Hogg have fans shipping them with the thought that maybe, just maybe, the two teenagers could be a couple.
Kasky sparked the fresh speculation with the photo, which shows him lovingly hugging Hogg, who contrasts Kasky’s soppy smile with a stare which pierces your soul.
One fan responded simply: “SHIP IT.”
Another person said, probably accurately, that “there’s at least 8 Tumblr accounts devoted to stanning this image alone.”
Sam Greisman, who hit the headlines during the Winter Olympics when his mother Sally Field tried to set him up with Team USA bronze medallist Adam Rippon, commented: “Look, I want what Cameron wants for himself, but I also hope he moves to New York and falls in love with Danny from Lady Bird.”
One person wrote: “20GayTeen is thriving.”
Another said: “I googled them both in an incognito window because I simultaneously wanted to know if they’re gay together and feel guilty for kind of diminishing their work down to their sexuality idk, gay social work guilt.”
Fellow activist Jaclyn Corin called them the “cutest people in the whole wide world.”
“So cute!! Be sure to do a ‘Dirty Dancing’ number. It’ll bring the house down. LOL! ” wrote one fan.
So cute!! Be sure to do a ‘Dirty Dancing’ number. It’ll bring the house down. LOL! pic.twitter.com/xIpD2xoAQN
— Christian Michael (@Bmichaelhimself) April 23, 2018
Another said: “These babies have more awareness at age 18 than most us will ever have in our entire lives.”
Hogg has spoken out repeatedly, not least of all against alt-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, leading the anti-gay polemicist to beg the activist to keep him on YouTube.
Jones has repeatedly questioned the details of the mass shooting, and in 2015, said that the 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 kids and six adults was “synthetic, completely fake with actors – in my view, manufactured.”
Hogg called his remarks “awful” and “disgusting” in savage tweets.
Speaking on CNN just days after the shooting, Kasky tore into Republican politicians for responding to massacres with “thoughts and prayers” but marching over anti-LGBT positions.
Cameron Kasky, a senior at the school, told CNN host Anderson Cooper that the time for meaningless words was over.
He said: “There’s a section of this society that will just shrug this off and send their thoughts and prayers, but will march for hours when they have to bake a rainbow wedding cake.”
Kasky was referring to the case currently in the US Supreme Court of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado, who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple.
He continued: “Everything I’ve heard where ‘We can’t do anything’ and ‘It’s out of our hands, it’s inevitable’ – I think that’s a facade that the GOP is putting up.
“I think that’s what they want us to think.
“I think that after every shooting, the NRA sends them a memo saying: ‘Send your thoughts and prayers, say let’s not talk about it now, say this happens.'”