26 year-old Alvaro Martinez, who is based in Madrid, has reported that social media giant Instagram has removed a photo in which he is kissing his partner.

The couple were overwhelmed with solidarity from around the world, over 73,000 comments came from all over the world, with 66,697 retweets and more than 188,000 ‘likes’.

https://twitter.com/AlvaroMF92/status/978680900971126784

He said that Instagram cited a “violation of community standards” as the reason for the censorship and he has since re-uploaded the image due in part to the outroar from the Twitter community:

‘Instagram has censored the last photo I posted because it violated community standards. I propose it again ‘.

He took to Twitter again to state that instagram has rectified the issue but he would still like an explanation for what happened:

‘Instagram rectifies and just published the photograph that he removed from my profile. I appreciate the change of position, although I still expect an explanation in this regard. But above all I appreciate the thousands and thousands of messages of support received.’

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgx8upQDRHo/?taken-by=alvaro_mfigueroa

He captioned the re-uploaded image saying:
‘It seems that certain photos bother. Envy has always been a bad companion of the human being. Live and let live. Respect and you will be respected. And do not forget anyone: to love is to love independently of the sexual orientation. Let’s see if you denounce it as inappropriate.’

Queer Censorship Trend

This is the latest in a long line of unwarranted censorship of queer couples on Instagram. In December, lesbian couple Jane and Veronica were voicing their disbelief when a photo they shared on social media was flagged and removed from the site.

The photo (below) depicts the couple with their son Alex snuggled up in bed, it was shared on several other pages reaching around 200,000 people before it was flagged and removed.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg1o3jihkT5/?taken-by=oh.mamiblue

This week they reshared the photo and denounced the blatant homophobia happening with the queer community’s uploads:

‘It’s been 4 months since #yosoloveoamor, flooded the networks, since this photo of #familia went viral and we received support from around the world literally, I want to thank you again for all that you did in those three weeks of real madness, where after they returned to denounce the #hashtag we made another #borraigdehomófobos and our fight became yours, and ours of all those families and people who receive contempt, rejection and hatred before an absurd phobia like this.

‘When I published the photo, they sent me several people who had the same thing, all homosexual people. But do you know what all this is for? To see that the world is in favor of equality, that it penalizes hatred, and that although some rules delete a photo, there are many hands behind giving visibility to what a few try to hide. “This is no nonsense: it is a crime, homophobia is punishable and it is something that can not be allowed’