What’s all the fuss about?

There’s a mounting campaign to get Heinz to re-instate the gay kiss advert they pulled after just 200 complaints.

It wasn’t even really a gay kiss – it was a man playing a female stereotype in New York Deli chef clothes who kissed the ‘husband’ on the way out of the door.

Perfectly innocent and by banning it (although they’ve managed to get themselves a HUGE amount of publicity), Heinz have basically said “yes we agree that homosexuality is wrong”.

The complaints basically centered around the fact that ‘children saw it’ and parents don’t want to explain homosexuality to their kids.

My seven year old daughter saw it and laughed “look daddy two men are kissing” – I just replied with “yeah and so what? Men can love and kiss men, women can love and kiss women and men can love and kiss women – it’s all fine”.

Here’s the ad if you haven’t seen it.





Politicians from Labour and the LibDems (not so much the Conservatives) are coming out in protest against Heinz with leader of the LibDems, Nick Clegg even writing to Heinz.

“The decision to withdraw it has not only offended many gay, lesbian, transgender – and straight – people, it also represents a backward step in attempts to combat homophobia in Britain today, not to mention a collective loss of humour.

“I am asking you to reverse this decision and reinstate the advert.”

There’s even a Boycott Heinz Facebook group – although as there is a Facebook Group for pretty much everything that isn’t saying much. But this group does have nearly 6000 members so that has to count for something.

Oh and there is a petition with over 10 thousand signatures as well.

The main problem I’ve got with them banning it is, in addition to the clear homophobic signal it sends there’s a real sense of humour by-pass.

Britain is famed for its funny adverts, for its cutting edge comedy and for its sense of humour but it’s these self censoring, everyone else censoring bigots that are causing otherwise funny things to be pulled.

Imagine what it would be like if it wasn’t for the BBC and Channel 4 (two media companies that don’t need to make a profit) all British comedy would be like American comedy.

ITV can only afford to be daring because of the BBC!

Oh and there is still plenty of homophobia in Britain whatever people might say on the outside. We got a call the other day about the fact that Christopher Biggins will be Mr Battle of Flowers (a big carnival in Jersey).

He will be sitting on a float with Miss Battle of Flowers (a young girl – 18-25 aka Miss Jersey) going around the parade during the day and evening.

Anyway – the caller basically said “I wouldn’t let my daughter sit with that poof”. I think they missed the point of homosexuality a little bit there.