Barilla Pasta Chief: We Don't Like Gays, They Can Buy Another Brand

In what will hopefully turn out to be a disaster for the company's bottom line, Guido Barilla, the CEO of Barilla, which has almost half the Italian pasta market and a quarter of that in the United States, made clear that he doesn't like gays and that, if gays don't like his views, then they can buy a different brand of pasta.  Personally, until now, the boyfriend and I have bought Barilla products.  But no more.  There are plenty of other options and Mr. Barilla can expect to not see another penny from us.  From remarks on the blogosphere, we will not be alone in this boycott.  The Independent looks at Barilla's statements:

Gay rights groups are calling for a boycott of the world’s biggest pasta maker Barilla after the company’s chairman said he would never use homosexual couples in his advertisements.

Guido Barilla, whose firm has almost half the Italian pasta market and a quarter of that in the US, told Italy’s La Zanzara radio show last night: “I would never do an advert with a homosexual family…if the gays don’t like it they can go an eat another brand. 

“For us the concept of the sacred family remains one of the fundamental values of the company.”

He added: “Everyone has the right to do what they want without disturbing those around them”. But then the pasta magnate upped the ante by attacking gay adoption. “I have no respect for adoption by gay families because this concerns a person who is not able to choose," he said.

Alessandro Zan, a gay rights campaigner and an MP in the left-wing Sel (Sinistra Ecologia Libertà) party, said:  “This is another example of Italian homophobia. I’m joining the boycott of Barilla and I hope other parliamentarians do the same.”  Campaigners have urged a boycott of all 20 brands owned by the Parma-based company, which include Voiello pasta and Filiz and Misko products.

By Thursday lunchtime, the company, which promotes its products using images of young, blond-haired children and their attractive parents, sought to underline its “respect" for gays in a statement attributed to its chairman.

“I’m sorry if my comments on La Zanzara have created misunderstanding or polemic, or if I’ve offended anyone. In the interview I only wanted to underline the central role of the woman in the family," he said.

But Ivan Scalfarotto, an MP in the centre-left Democratic Party, wasn’t convinced. “It’s depressing that a businessman used to working and travelling around the world should say what Guido Barilla had said. I certainly won’t be buying his products any more.”

Talk is cheap.  If Barilla wants to convince me of his contrition, he will have to have the company produce some ads with gay families.  Until, then, my money will be spent on other brands.

Is Hollywood Opening Its Arms to Gay Characters and Families?

By many accounts it is still taboo in Hollywood for a gay or lesbian actor to be openly gay because the powers that be worry that being gay may hurt an actor's star quality. This stereotype may be true with movie goers and TV viewers over 60 who would discriminate against a gay or lesbian actor, but in therms of the younger generations - generations like that of my children - I suspect that they could care less. If the actor is good and the story line is well written, I suspect that most could care less about who the actor goes home to at the end of the day. Look at Neil Patrick Harris and his two new Emmy nominations as a case in point. Yes, things are different within the ranks of the Christo-fascists - Peter LaBarbarea and Tony Perkins nearly wet themselves at the mere mention of openly gay actors or - the horror - gay related story lines. Whatever is motivating Hollywood, I applaud it because every show or movie that depicts LGBT citizens as normal Americans undercuts the hate and lies disseminated by our enemies. USA Today makes the case that the battle against Hollywood's acceptance of gay characters and gay families has already been lost notwithstanding the hysterics and threatened boycotts of the professional bigot, I mean Christian set. Here are highlights for an article in today's issue of USA Today (BTW, the photo is from eonline.com which reports that Kurt on Glee is going to have a new b/f in the coming season):
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When it comes to gay marriage and gay families, politicians are still bickering and courts are still deliberating. But in entertainment, it's all over but the shouting. Hollywood, which once routinely depicted gay people as miserable, dysfunctional or tragic, now produces movies and TV shows — such as this summer's film The Kids Are All Right, ABC's Modern Family and Fox's Glee — in which gay relationships and gay families are portrayed as just like other families — normal, unremarkable, no big deal.
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"The general trajectory has them transitioning from minstrel acts and punch lines to relatable everyday characters," says David Hauslaib, founder of Queerty, a media-watching blog "by and for the queer community." He adds, "It's a new era where (being a gay family) is no longer a significant part of the story." Why is this happening now? Is Hollywood following the culture, or is the culture following Hollywood?
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Jarrett Barrios, president of GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says it's no accident that positive depictions of gay families are increasing. "These stories are interesting, they're edgy, they make for good entertainment," he says. "Hollywood is a business, so they're telling good stories because it's good business. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have stories that are capturing the imaginations of Americans because fundamentally, we're as American as everyone else."
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"It shows how regular our families are; it goes a long way toward gay and lesbian families introducing ourselves to straight families as not that much different," says Dustin Lance Black, the writer/director who won an Oscar for the screenplay of Milk, about murdered San Francisco politician Harvey Milk (played by straight actor Sean Penn, who won an Oscar). Milk was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. "And unlike in Milk and so many (past) gay movies, the lead characters don't die," Black adds.
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"The overarching movement is in the culture," says Stephanie Coontz, history professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and an expert on contemporary families. "Hollywood never had the courage or strength or ability to get positive portrayals of gays until things began to change in the culture at large. "When it did, Hollywood jumped on it. But they couldn't do it unless marketers and investors realized there's an audience for it."

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Like it or not, LGBT Americans are slowly winning the culture wars and folks like Peter LaBarbera and Victoria Cobb at The Family Foundation are becoming more and more an anachronism. Yes, they will continue to pitch a fit and spew hatred and religious based bigotry, but their constituency is fortunately dying off. They'll become more hysterical and hate filled before their cause withers away - and they are forced to get real jobs as opposed to acting as parasitic opportunists. But the good news is that time and education are on the side of equality under the civil laws.

Wingnut Frenzy Over Campbell Soup Ads

What with the economy in the worse shape since perhaps the 1930's, millions of American families facing foreclosure and the loss of their homes, people unable to pay utility bills in the midst of winter, there are any number of things Christian organizations could do to assist their fellow man. But not the American Family Association. Oh no, the lunatics at AFA are instead in a frenzy over the fact that Campbell Soup has placed ads in - oh the horror - gay publications. Forget the poor, the homeless, and the hungry. The "gay agenda" and its supporters trump all else. At least in the minds of the mentally imbalanced and those looking for more donations from the sheep like followers. Never mind that the LGBT community has consumer purchasing power in the neighborhood of $800 billion and any company in the business of making money would be foolish to ignore such a niche market. Here are some highlights from AFA's "news" website, OneNewsNow:

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The American Family Association (AFA) says Christian consumers need to know that the Campbell Soup Company embraces the homosexual agenda. Campbell Soup bought two 2-page ads in the December and January issues of The Advocate, the nation's largest homosexual magazine. The ads promote their Swanson line of broth, and one of the ads highlights the lives of two lesbians, who are portrayed as being married, along with "their" son. Other ads feature chefs from New York City.
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Randy Sharp, AFA's director of special projects, says concerned consumers should contact company officials and ask them to stop endorsing homosexuality. "When you specifically target a homosexual magazine, then your company is basically endorsing these activities; you're endorsing the lifestyle," claims Sharp. "And in one ad, which...clearly shows two lesbians who say they are married, who say they have a son together, ...the Campbell Soup Company is saying 'we approve of homosexual marriage.' There is no question whatsoever of what the intentions of the company are."

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In an Action Alert to its supporters, AFA accuses Campbell of normalizing same-sex families. . . . Anthony Sanzio, a Campbell Soup Company spokesperson, tells OneNewsNow that the company reaches out to all segments of society. "We support all types of families, regardless of how they're defined, [and have done so] for more than 100 years," Sanzio offers. "We advertise in a variety of different media outlets that appeal to a broad spectrum of society. That's what we're doing here, and that's what we'll continue to do."

Out and Proud Parents and Families

The Economist has a story that is good news for gays and that will no doubt cause the Bible thumpers palpitations (http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9409421) because it shows that the religious crazies are slowly losing the so-called culture war:

[T]wo sets of data suggest that America as a whole is becoming steadily more tolerant. First, opinion polls show that homophobia has receded . . . . As recently as 1982, only 34% of Americans thought homosexuality should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle. Now, 57% do. Since young Americans are far more relaxed about homosexuality than their elders—three-quarters of 18-34-year-olds think it is OK to be gay, whereas half of those over 55 think it is not—this trend is likely to continue. This year was also the first since Gallup started asking the question that a majority of Americans have not said that homosexual relations are morally wrong. And a hefty 89% think that gays should have equal rights in terms of job opportunities. If that strikes you as no big deal, recall that a total ban on gays working for the federal government was repealed only in 1975.

Second, and more subtly, one can look at demography. Gary Gates, a Californian academic, has been mining census data to determine where gays live in America. He observes several trends. First, the number of openly gay households is growing five times faster than the population as a whole. The last full census, in 2000, counted nearly 600,000 same-sex couples. Five years later, the American Community Survey (in which the Census Bureau quizzes a statistically representative sample of 1.4m households) estimated that that number had increased by 30%, to 777,000. Mr Gates reckons the bulk of the increase is because as tolerance spreads, more gay couples are willing to be counted.

The increase was most pronounced in the Midwest, with Wisconsin showing an 81% jump in the number of same-sex couples and Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and Indiana also among the ten fastest-growing states in this respect. What this means, perhaps, is that gay America is becoming more like Middle America. “Much of the stereotype around gays is a stereotype of urban white gay men,” says Mr Gates. “The gay community is becoming less like that, and more like the population in general.”

How sad that James Dobson, Peter LaBarbera and other such bigots will have an increasingly difficult time trying to convince the general public that gays are all drug using, sexually promiscuous alcoholics and freaks in general. Once you go to PTA meetings, car pool and other such things with gay couples, only the most brain dead Christianists can believe the anti-gay lies. Hopefully, we are nearing the tipping point where perenial gay bashing will begin to actually lose the GOP large numbers of voters.