The United States Postal Service shared good news on Friday with an announcement they’ll be honoring two LGBTQ+ icons with stamps in 2025: Keith Haring and Betty White.
“This early glimpse into our 2025 stamp program demonstrates our commitment to providing a diverse range of subjects and designs for both philatelists and stamp enthusiasts,” said Lisa Bobb-Semple, Stamp Services director for USPS, where “diversity” will no doubt be under fire under the incoming administration.
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Enjoy it while it lasts — with a “forever” stamp.
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Keith Haring shot to fame in the 1980s with his iconic, graffiti-inspired drawings that became an instantly recognizable visual language. He devoted much of his work to social activism centered on the HIV/AIDS epidemic; Haring died of AIDS-related complications 1990. He was just 31 years old.
The new “Love” stamp commemorates the artist with his now classic image, Untitled from 1985, depicting two figures holding up a heart. The stamp “celebrates the universal experience of love” with the “instantly recognizable” image, according to the Postal Service.
| USPS
The service’s art director, Antonio Alcalá, called the drawing “ideal” pick for the Postal Service’s popular stamp program.
“The non-specificity of the figures allows a variety of people to see themselves in this stamp,” Alcalá said. “Partners getting married, celebrating an anniversary, siblings sending each other a heartfelt greeting, or even party planners setting a positive tone for their event.”
Betty White gets the “forever” treatment, as well — she’d lived nearly that long at her death just days shy of her 100th birthday in 2021.
Another “icon,” by the Postal Service’s description, White was a mainstay of television since her debut on local TV in Hollywood in the late 1940s. She was a popular guest on game shows before she revealed her comedy chops for a primetime audience on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, playing Sue Ann Nivens, the acerbic and sex-starved host of a local TV cooking show. She earned her gay bona fides as the lovable and clueless Rose Nyland on The Golden Girls.
White’s purple-hued portrait based on a 2010 photograph by Kwaku Alston captures the celebrity’s sly, “in on the joke” personality.
The actress and animal lover was decidedly non-political over her career, but did weigh in on marriage equality in 2010 with some “forever” advice for readers.
“I don’t care who anybody sleeps with,” White told Parade Magazine. “If a couple has been together all that time — and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones — I think it’s fine if they want to get married. I don’t know how people can get so anti-something. Mind your own business, take care of your affairs, and don’t worry about other people so much.”
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