Transgender icon Candis Cayne , Olympic diver Greg Louganis and "My So-Called Life" actor and activist Wilson Cruz are among the 49 people to lend their voices to a new social media campaign that aims to continue the conversation over the Orlando mass shooting's implications for the LGBT community.
Those stars and others recalled their Pride-related memories for the Rest In PRIDE effort, which launched Thursday. Organizers selected 49 people of all ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds and walks of life to speak out in the video -- one memory for each of the 49 lives lost in the June 12 massacre.
Singer-songwriter Brian Justin Crum's recording of "Light" from the hit Broadway musical "Next to Normal" serves as the soundtrack to the video, which received 40,000 views on YouTube by Friday. It concludes with a montage of the participants dabbing rainbow-style "war paint" on their faces in a symbolic act of solidarity.
"Scandal" star Guillermo Diaz shared his own Rest in PRIDE photo on Instagram.
The campaign's organizers want supporters to create their own videos of themselves wearing rainbow "war paint" and upload them to the group's official Facebook page with the hashtag #RestInPRIDE. They're also encouraging participants to support One Orlando, a local advocacy group dedicated to providing support for the Orlando victims and their families.
Doing so, they hope, will send the message that the lives of the 49 victims were "not lost in vain but live on in the collective heart of our community."
Charley Cullen Walters, who created the campaign with Crum, Blake Peyrot and Arno Diem, told The Huffington Post that his team's mission is to "give people a chance to direct the emotions from the Orlando tragedy to a positive platform of a greater community, that will continue the conversation of what happened and what needs to happen next."
Read more about the Rest in PRIDE campaign here.
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