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?
I can’t bring myself to support this boycott, I agree with the politics, but I can’t abide any other ketchupp.
Years ago i kept a parrot (It’s a long styory – and I gave her to a zoo in the end). For some reason this bloody bird could tell the difference between South African Granny Smith’s and any other apple, and would only eat apples from mSouth Africa.
So despite being a left wing member of thee labour Party, and leter the SWP, I had to go into greengrocers and insist that I woudl only but South African – right att the time of te anti-apartheid boycotts.
I am still embarrased about it.
Did the parrot speak btw? Churchill used to teach his parrot swear words….
Ah, amazing what people admit to on blogs.
Ga! You think that’s bad? I recall asking a market smallholder during the boycott if the apples I wanted were from South Africa and was told ‘oh, no, love, we wouldn’t want any of those horrible black people touching them’
I was so dumbfounded i just stood there like a bloody fish with my mouth open.
As for a gay kiss-in, well, the factory in Wigan wouldn’t know what had hit them….