Heinz: the boycott begins

As we know Heinz bottled it the other day and spinelessly capitulated to the 200 or so complaints in response to their advert that showed two blokes kiss. And now Stonewall and Gaydar Radio have called for a boycott of Heinz, along with a group that has been set up on Facebook to protest at Heinz’s bigoted surrender. Also, there have been calls by MPs to reinstate the advert. Unlike the 200 “Shocked from Surbiton” complaints Heinz received, will they listen to the 2,000 signatures on the online petition in protest at the withdrawal of the advert?

Life does not revolve around the heterosexual nuclear family and the fact that Heinz so readily capitulated to these complaints exposes an ingrained level of homophobia.

I remember years ago (circa..1989) my local FE college in Brighton refused to distribute information about safe sex because it included photos of lesbians and gay men …..kissing. But they were happy to distribute the info including the photos of straights kissing…The info pack was produced by a government department under Thatcher and at the height of Section 28. We had a protest, we argued that the college adminstration were homophobic and bigoted in the way they perceived sex and sexuality, they were indulging in double-standards and upholding heterosexuality as the “norm” while denigrating and rendering lesbians and gay men as invisible.

One idea we had, to make a political statement, was having a same sex kiss-in outside the college. The college got wind of this development and started to distribute the packs (with the info for lesbians and gay men). We didn’t have the kiss-in as we had won but looking back we should have…

Maybe 200 people should protest outside the Heinz UK office having a mass same sex kiss-in. Bring the message home to Heinz. Any takers?

Give it a rest, Nadine….

Nadine Dorries is at it again putting forward another amendment to reduce the abortion time limits. As the F Word post states, the HFE Bill has finished it’s second reading and next is the report stage. So there is a potential problem that the Bill will be ping-ponged between the Lords and the Commons.

Words fail me regarding Nadine Dorries and her determination to reduce and eventually chip away the abortion time limits. But she will obviously do her very very best to scupper this Bill.