IGF CultureWatch

This Super Bowl Snickers ad has unleashed a storm of criticism from activists. Examples: GLAAD, Matthew Shepard Foundation Condemn Anti-Gay SNICKERS Campaign and Human Rights Campaign Condemns Violent and Homophobic Marketing Campaign by Mars, Inc.).

But I've heard several accounts regarding gay guys gathered to watch the game who reacted to the ad with hoots of laughter, seeing it as lampooning homophobia rather than homosexuality. So, was Snickers stoking the fires of intolerance in order to foster sales, or are gay activists manufacturing controversy for PR and funds from their provoked donor base?

Or could the ad in and of itself be innocuous, even good-natured fun, but still allow those squeamish about homosex to feel validated?

More. Some of the negative responses were provoked by these "player reaction" spots (here and here), which ran on the Snickers website (they're gone from there now).

Comments Roy:

If you want to see something truly funny, read this thread on Free Republic. Some of them have been calling in complaining that the ad seems to endorse homosexuality. Mars, Inc. must be spinning.

Indeed!

Still more. IGF contributing author James Kirchick offers his take: "what do gay rights groups with tons of money on their hands spend their time doing? Fighting against anti-gay ballot initiatives? No, condemning supposedly homophobic television commercials."

Kirchick includes a link to gay Democratic activist/outer John Aravosis at AMERICAblog:

The Mars family, that produced the violently homophobic ads, is one of the top billionaire Republican activist families in the country.

See, it's all part of the great rightwing conspiracy!

And more still.. USA Today, which scored the spot highly at 9th in its ranking of Super Bowl ads, finds an activist who breaks ranks:

Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports.com, a website for gay sports enthusiasts, says he saw it at a Super Bowl party with 30 gay friends-and no one had a problem with it. "I simply wasn't offended by it," Zeigler says. "I just don't see how a couple of mechanics pulling out chest hair because they kissed is offensive."

Still, the paper reports that "marketing experts" advise, "They might want to develop some very positive program to show they're progressive and inclusive" or "run an apologetic national newspaper."

See 'em all. Chris Crain has posted on his blog all four versions of the ad (the one that ran and the three alternate endings once available on the Snickers webste), as well as the two "player reaction" clips. He comment, in response to HRC's offer to put Snickers in touch with "any number of GLBT Americans who have suffered hate crimes," that:

Well I, for one, am a gay American - how, exactly, can one person be G, L, B and T anyway? - who has suffered a hate crime, and I am more disturbed by the gross overreaction of these overly earnest gay rights groups.

The Washington Post Magazine provides an extensive look at the Janet Jenkins vs. "ex-gay" former partner Lisa Miller custody battle over Miller's biological child, Isabella, born after the two women had entered into a civil union in Vermont (but never adopted by Jenkins).

Law-wise, thanks in part to Miller's legal missteps, Jenkins may have good standing to demand joint custody that would take Isabella from Virginia (where she now resides with Miller) to Vermont for extended visits. But as the Post reports:

that's only part of the larger battle. Janet's lawyers are pondering how to win a legal victory without losing in the court of public opinion. News footage of deputies wresting a sobbing Isabella from her biological mother to give to her former lesbian partner would set the cause of gay rights back just as surely as any loss in court....

Let's hope it doesn't come to that. If it does, it will be fair to ask whether Jenkins and her attorneys should be held responsible for the backlash that follows.

Over at Overlawyered.com, Walter Olson has a post on gay inns in the U.K that are concerned over a proposed British anti-bias law. It's an interesting question: If you can't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, including in your advertising messages, do gay-specific accommodations become illegal?

Back in the U.S., discrimination initiatives involving gays seem to have less to do with infringing on private employers (for good or ill), and more to do with allowing the federal and state governments themselves to discriminate by treating gays as unequal citizens. Last week, for example, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the state's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage prevents public institutions from providing employees' same-sex partners with healthcare and other benefits.

During the campaign to pass the anti-marriage amendment, proponents assured voters it would not affect domestic partner benefits, then immediately upon passage spun round and claimed that for the state to grant DP benefits would unlawfully constitute recognition of "a union similar to marriage."

Of course, this isn't really an unintended consequence of the amendment, just a consequences hidden from the public through social conservative deceit.

More. As Overlawyered.com noted in March 2005:

a spokeswoman for Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, a group heavily backed by Michigan's seven Catholic dioceses, told the Detroit News "nothing that's on the books is going to change. We continue to confuse this issue by bringing in speculation." However, with the amendment now in effect, the state's attorney general-to cheers from most of the amendment's organized backers-has issued an advisory opinion stating that it does indeed prohibit the city of Kalamazoo from providing DP benefits to its employees after the expiration of their current union contract....

Don Herzog of Left2Right, who has assembled plenty of links on the story [see here and here], aptly labels the sequence of events "Bait and Switch."

On a related note: Wash. [State] Initiative Would Require Married Couples to Have Kids. It's a stunt, but I kind of like the idea as "agit-prop."

IGF contributing author David Link has just completed a four-round debate about same-sex marriage at a new website called PublicSquare.net. One interesting argument came up in the final round, when he asked his opponent, Mary Jo Anderson, whether she actually believed homosexual people exist, and she said, candidly, that the answer was No. Comments link, this kind of thinking underlies much of the debate on the fringes of the other side, and

"it goes right to the heart of what kind of conversation such people are engaged in. They are not so much having a debate as an intervention, doing their very best to convince those of us who are homosexual that we are wrong about ourselves."

He also notes, pertinently, of his opponent that:

"Her citations to Michaelangelo Signorile and Judith Levine and the signers of the Beyond Marriage manifesto suggest she may wish she were having this debate with them rather than me. For the record, I find their arguments every bit as problematic as she does, which is why I have never either made such arguments or in any way endorsed them. I will stand side by side with Anderson when it comes to opposing polygamy or the imposition of some "queer value system," whose parameters I can't even begin to imagine. I'm here to argue for the equal rights the Constitution of my country promises and not much more. I don't want to change the family; I want to make sure lesbians and gay men who come after me will not have it used against them the way it is now being used.

Again and again, gays not on the left have to wage a two-pronged struggle: against anti-gay rightwingers who would deny us fundamental human rights, and against activists on the antinomian-chic "queer" left whose views of socially engineered, government-decreed "liberation" actually do suggest the nightmare nihilism that the right otherwise equates with basic equality for gay people.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh writes, "the big picture is both the left and the right [are] calling for some speech restrictions, and opposing other speech restrictions." Examples over time include this from anti-gay neo-con Irving Kristol (from the summer of, appropriately enough, 1984): "I don't think the advocacy of homosexuality really falls under the First Amendment any more than the advocacy or publication of pornography does."

Volokh adds, "The advent of the left-wing feminist calls for restricting sexually explicit speech in the 1980s has evened the matter somewhat," and then tallies support for censorship ranging from politically correct speech codes (the left) to anti-flag burning efforts (the right).

Speaking (while we can) of loony rightwing speech, Maggie Gallagher's Institute for Marriage and Public Policy reposts an article from the religiously right journal First Things by Ryan T. Anderson, who opines:

Living a chaste life on a college campus is difficult. Defending your commitments to chastity, whether to your friends in the dorm room or to your professors in the classroom, is even more difficult. If you haven't been a university student for a while, think back to what the sexual climate on campus was like when you were in college. Now imagine what it's like with official university LGBT offices pushing for same-sex marriage and gay rights. ...

Think about that: Advocating the mutual commitments and responsibilities of same-sex marriage makes it more difficult for heterosexuals to remain chaste, somehow.

I suppose the thinking might be that fiddling with sexual barriers of any kind regarding homosex will open the floodgates (the Rick Santorum view), or that some LGBT activists actually do advocate the elimination of marriage and related behavioral norms as oppressive and patriarchal (thanks again, guys and gals).

But still, you have to gasp at the gall behind the assertion that exposure to the mere advocacy of gay marriage will tempt innocent straight co-eds to go, as it were, straight to hell.

While applauding the House passage of a bill to hike the minimum wage, "11 LGBT organizations urged the quick passage of the accompanying bill in the Senate, and a speedy signing by President Bush," according to this report.

"It is imperative that the LGBT community concerns itself with matters like these, not just because raising the minimum wage is an issue of basic fairness, but also because we know low-wage jobs and stagnant pay are issues that so many in our community face on a daily basis," said Nancy Wohlforth, Pride At Work Co-President.

In other words, some gay people earn the minimum wage, so it's a pressing gay issue (leaving aside whether a minimum wage hike will cost some of them their jobs, and keep even more from ever getting hired). But will we ever see a gay coalition statement that reads, "The LGBT community, which is overwhelmingly made up of taxpayers, calls for a tax cut"? Or even, "The LGBT community, with a large proportion of small business owners, opposes calls for even more burdensome business regulation"? Don't hold your breath.

Meanwhile, as Log Cabin points out, Democrats in the Senate are blocking a vote on a pro-gay amendment to the minimum wage act, sponsored by GOP Senator Gordon Smith, that would ease the tax burden for domestic partner benefits. "The Domestic Partner Health Benefits Equity Act would correct an unfair provision in the tax code that blocks self-employed people from deducting their domestic partner's health insurance premium costs." You'd think that might be the immediate legislative priority for our community, wouldn't you?

Says Log Cabin head Patrick Sammon:

"Democrat leaders should allow a vote on this important amendment. LGBT Democrats gave a lot of money and support to their Party last November."

You also might be forgiven for thinking that this is an argument that a coalition of "progressive" gay groups would be making.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, whose mission is to "build the political power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community from the ground up," can't help leading off its response to the State of the Union by condemning Bush over Iraq. Here's the lead from a statement by Matt Foreman, NGLTF's executive director:

"Tonight, President Bush told us that he will ignore the central message of the 2006 congressional elections: end the unsupported, unwarranted and utterly unnecessary bloody war in Iraq. The nightmare in the Middle East continues unabated."

Do they think having U.S. helicopters take flight off the Bhagdad embassy roof (as with a former, glorious progressive victory "from the ground up") and leaving Iraq to be partitioned between Iran and Al-Qaida will be a good thing for the U.S.-not to mention Iraqi gays?

Nary a word from the dominant cohort of gay Democratic activists over the choice of freshman Virginia Sen. James Webb to deliver their party's televised State of the Union response. Webb is a firm supporter of the armed services' "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" gay ban, about which he says, "in terms of the military, that that's a policy that's working."

Right, and if you believe that, you'll believe "an immediate shift toward strong regionally based diplomacy," in other words, working with the likes of Syria and Iran, is a good way to move forward in Iraq.

Breaking news... Isaiah Washington has agreed to tape a public service announcement for GLAAD. Hmmm. Here's a possible PSA for him: "Don't call people faggots. Even if they're faggots."

What's interesting about the latest Grey's Anatomy homophobic flare-up is the way the show's creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes, and ABC, seem quite willing to allow actor Isaiah Washington to get away with using (and then lying about using) the slur "faggot" to denigrate gay cast member T.R. Knight. If an actor used a racist or anti-Semitic slur against a fellow actor, would the response from producer and network be so benign? It's another sign of how acceptable casual homophobia remains, even among Hollywood uber-liberals.

Update. IGF's critique brings powerful to heel? Well, probably not. But according to the AP:

...on Thursday, ABC chastised Washington for using the term "faggot" about Knight in an on-set dustup in October with co-star Patrick Dempsey and then using the slur again at this week's Golden Globes as he denied ever uttering it.

Later Thursday, Washington, who's gotten hold of the biggest role of his career on "Grey's Anatomy," conceded using the invective and issued a heartfelt apology. But it remained to be seen whether it would mollify Knight or co-star Katherine Heigl, who had leaped to his defense.

I wonder if, this time, Washington actually knows what's in the apology being attributed to him.

Still more. I guess now it's a real story , with the NYT giving it major play.

Washington says Chastity Bono made him the "GLAAD poster boy" for his portrayal of a gay man in Spike Lee's "Get On The Bus." Then again, GLAAD can never resist going gaga over "inclusive" representations of gays of color, particularly in leftwing message films.

Still even more. Embattled 'Grey's' Star Now Headed to Rehab... Maybe he'll meet up with Mark Foley.

A damning critique of the now fully partisan Human Rights Campaign, via Chris Crain, referencing this laudatory Boston Globe story. Comments Crain:

How has the hijacking of HRC by Democrats worked out so far? For one, HRC took money out of the fight against ballot initiatives to ban gay marriage, even when they would amend state constitutions. "[HRC leadder Joe] Solmonese said the group decided after the losses of 2004 that they could be more effective by focusing on candidates instead of ballot initiatives," the Globe reported.

So instead, HRC sank money and support in favor of Democratic Party priorities, like winning a majority in the New Hampshire state Senate. In fact, the Globe reports, HRC was the single largest donor on New Hampshire state Senate races. How exactly does that move gay Americans closer to equality?

The effect of the new HRC strategy is to put all the gay movement's marbles in the Democratic Party basket, even though from Bill Clinton and John Kerry on down, the party has almost never taken a political risk for its gay constituents. The Globe story compares the new HRC strategy as akin to that of labor unions. We can all see how powerful they aren't, after sinking themselves into a one-party, no message strategy.

Some lessons need to be learned over and over, it seems.