Heinz Deli Mayo, delivered with a kiss (updated a little at the bottom now)
After 200 complaints Heinz have decided to withdraw the advert that featured two men kissing as it was deemed “offensive” and “inappropriate”. This makes me genuinely sad especially as complaints centred around the advert being “unsuitable to be seen by children” and that it raised the difficult problem of parents having to discuss the issue of same-sex relationships with younger viewers. To me this just says bad parenting, I don’t understand how it can possibly be difficult to go to your child.
“Bettsy you know you have one mummy and one daddy”
“yes mummy”
“And you best friend Suzy has only one mummy”
“Yes mummy”
“Well some people have two Daddy’s or two Mummy’s”
“Ok Mummy can I go and play now”
Read the rest after the break.
Personally I don’t think the advert is the greatest and it was clearly designed to get a shocked response like this so Heinz can go “we aer sooooo cosmopolitan (come gays spend your pink pound on our super market brand sauces) but if people are kicking up a fuss we will pull the advert because our customers know best.” So Heinz can now be all things to all people. It just makes me sick that people can be so narrow minded that they can think its ok to talk about gay relationships as inappropriate, and as though gay people are put on this earth as a direct challenge to their parenting skills.
This takes me back to the survey asking parents in America where they were asked about a series of images they would think were inappropriate in a computer game, two men kissing was deemed unacceptable by 70% of parents where as a person being beheaded was only considered wrong by 15%. How can this possibly be a correct way of thinking about relationships and two people in love. Surely we should be happy that two people can find happiness together rather than going all old school Bible studies and proclaiming all gays should be burned at the cross.
Back to the advert, I am not particularly sad that Heinz have taken it off the air, it wasn’t designed to normalise homosexuality, or show people that gay couples are just like every day folks and not devil worshipping paedophiles that are constantly wired off our heads on a vast array of drugs. This was meant to shock audiences. It just makes me sad that audiences then went all Mary Whitehouse. Boo hiss boo.
Other related articles are:
Here, where I discuss the issues that gay people are still facing across the world.
And here where I talk about Microsoft and the removal of gametags that use the word gay.
oooooo and one not from us is this over at The Guardian which talks about homosexuality and celebrity.
THE UPDATED BIT
Pinknews have found it rather disgusting that this whole event has occured and wonders what would happen if this hoo har had occured if it were a couple of mixed race, would Heinz have removed the advert then? Also what will happen if two hundered gay men complain to Heinz? Will we get an apology, after all it could be read that Heinz are saying that gay people are not an acceptable part of life and must be taken off the air.
The phone number for Heinz customer care line is 0800 528 5757.
