gay and lesbian rights are human rights — since 1978
This is an ad made by the International Gay and Lesbian Association about same-sex parenting. Take careful note of the minimalist decor, the civilised domestic performance of spaghetti eating (is that a spot of basil pesto on that fork?) and the well-tailored look of all three protagonists. Now listen to the civilised voiceover with its reassuring pedagogical message of ‘difference’:
“Children of homosexuals do not necessarily become homosexuals.”
I made a new category specially for this post. It’s called the “First Up Against the Wall Department.” Because in the event of a revolution, an uprising or even a little day-trip to Belgium, where ILGA is based, these people would be. Although I think we could come up with something a great deal more painful than shooting, don’t you?
wow. speechless, and not in a good way.
(also, what’s with the bad dubbing?)
Comment by nix — September 7, 2006 @ 9:17 pm
You’d think, since they evidently paid some advertising company a lot of money to make the ad, that they’d be able to produce sound and image continuity.
Comment by Az — September 8, 2006 @ 4:49 am
“Children of homosexuals do not necessarily become homosexuals.”
Yeah, but only because their homosexual parents aren’t working hard enough.
Comment by piny — September 8, 2006 @ 6:04 am
i think it’s because they’re eating pasta. because that is the food of straightness… no human can eat pasta and remain queer.
(what am i going on about?)
Comment by nix — September 9, 2006 @ 10:03 am
Yeah, but only because their homosexual parents aren’t working hard enough.
But his homosexual parents are working hard! Look at their grey shirts and that lovely loft apartment with modern art hanging on the wall! I bet they both earn over $60k a year… Good citizens, working for the man. That alone gives them the right to produce heterosexual offspring.
Comment by Az — September 9, 2006 @ 1:43 pm
Frankly I’m aghast! What on earth is that young man doing waving his spaghetti around in the air? It’s getting cold! If he’s going to eat it he should be twirling it neatly with a spoon on the other end! Slightly above the plate, not in front of his mouth! And certainly not while he’s talking! And his elbows are on the table! Have his parents taught him nothing?
Oh. I suppose it’s the old lah-di-dah fancy gays fancy table manners vs honest straight working class man act? And yes, semantically, the tangle of trembling (cold, ugh!) spaghetti on his fork demonstrates the precarity of the coming out to your parents moment. Bingo, two birds with one stone!
“Although I think we could come up with something a great deal more painful than shooting, don’t you?”
Az, are you suggesting a well placed fist up against the wall might be more appropriate? It’s a fine line…
Comment by gaylourdes — September 10, 2006 @ 12:15 pm
Fists certainly deliver the message a good deal more personally than guns, it’s true…
Comment by Az — September 11, 2006 @ 12:40 pm
I’m gay. I had straight parents. Gay people can adopt.whatever and have their kids grown up straight. So what? Who cares. You do. You want to kill someone for their opinion. They have committed the unforgiveable crime of not taking your world view into account.
How about another ad? One that shows that two parents can have a gay nazi child? How would you cope with that? Its just as true as that ad, and you are the living proof of it.
Comment by Alice — September 26, 2006 @ 2:13 am
Nope, I don’t want to kill anyone, and if you lack the sense of humour to recognise the irony in the statement, ‘First up against the wall, come the revolution,’ maybe you aren’t my intended audience.
Perhaps I wasn’t explicit enough in my commentary. The ad is appalling because of the assimilationist gesture in it — the desire to tell heterosexuals that really, ‘homosexual’ people are just like everyone else. The message underlying it is that heterosexuals only have to tolerate queer reproduction if the queer reproducing are assimilated, middle-class and ‘normal’.
By the way, I’m not gay.
Comment by Az — September 27, 2006 @ 6:19 am
i also am concerned about the symbolism of the spaghetti. Is it because Mussolini said pasta was for pansies and that faggoty couple have been feeding their child a solid diet of wriggling cold stodge in their determination to queer him?
Comment by tallace — October 13, 2006 @ 9:20 am