Barilla pasta got into some hot water six weeks ago
after AMERICAblog exclusively broke the news that the Italian giant’s
chairman, Guido Barilla, told an Italian radio show that the company
would never put gay people in its advertising.
Barilla added that if gays didn’t like it, they could buy someone else’s pasta.
So they did.
What happened next was a textbook case of Gay David vs. Corporate Goliath in the Internet age, with
Barilla issuing no fewer than four apologies in a failed attempt to quell the
growing consumer and media meltdown of its once-famed “family” brand.
Fast forward to today, and there are signs that Barilla got the
message. (Albeit, six weeks late.) It still remains unclear, however,
if change is on the horizon, and whether Barilla will be taking
“bigotoni” off the menu for good.
Barilla says it’s reached out to gay representatives in the US and
Italy, though we have no details about any of that outreach, other than
the fact that gay political icon David Mixner is involved, which is
always good. But beyond that, who knows. Barilla certainly never
reached out to us, and we broke the story.
It will be interesting to see if Barilla follows the usual corporate
path of parlaying with the large gay groups who have become increasingly
irrelevant to the online direction that civil rights, and all
progressive activism, has gone in the past twenty years. They always
try to broker a deal with the people who didn’t get them in trouble,
thinking that somehow this will appease the people who did get them in
trouble. And it rarely works.
Specifically, Barilla has created an “advisory board to promote diversity.” As Kathleen Sebelius would say….
I want to know if the company has a comprehensive LGBT
anti-discrimination policy, for starters, and how many openly gay people
it has in any kind of senior position anywhere in the company.
Next, they promise a new advertising campaign that’s more inclusive.
Hmm. That’s really the cruz of the problem, that Barilla said they
wouldn’t include gays in their ads. Let’s see some gays in their ads,
and let’s see the advertising budget, where the ads run, how often they
run, whether any actually run in gay media (and straight media), not to
mention on the gay blogs. (And absolutely Barilla should run ads in the
straight media, but they should also show support for the gay media here
and at home as well.)
Make those changes, then we’ll talk.
From one end of the country to the other, the overlapping developments on a single day underscored what a historic year 2013 has been for the U.S. gay-rights movement — "the gayest year in gay history," according to Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, the movement's largest advocacy group.
Yet each of Monday's developments, while heralded by activists, revealed ways in which the gay-rights debate remains complex and challenging for many Americans.
Republicans, for example, are increasingly split on how to address gay-rights issues — some want to expand their party's following, while others want to satisfy the religious conservatives who make up a key part of the GOP base. More than 40 percent of Americans remain opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage. And even some prominent gays remain uncertain whether they should make their sexual orientation known to the world at large.
Mike Michaud, the Democratic congressman from Maine, said he came out to dispel "whisper campaigns" about his sexuality as the three-way race for governor began to take shape. Through his six terms, he'd never before spoken publicly about his sexual orientation, and he broke the news to his mother only hours before releasing his statement.
In Hawaii, where the state House is debating a Senate-passed gay-marriage bill, thousands of citizens have signed up to testify — and the majority of those who've spoken thus far oppose the measure.
And in Washington, even as gay-rights supporters celebrated the Senate's backing of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, conveyed his opposition and left it unclear whether the GOP-controlled House would even vote on the bill, known as ENDA.
Boehner "believes this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small business jobs," said his spokesman, Michael Steel.
Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay issues, said he was on the Senate floor in 1996 when an earlier version of ENDA lost by a single vote.
"Even though we're making rapid progress on marriage equality, and the entire movement seems unstoppable, there are still big pockets of resistance," Socarides added. "It's going to cost a lot of money and require a lot of work to get us to where anti-gay discrimination no longer exists."
Monday's 61-30 vote on ENDA demonstrated that the Senate's Republican minority could not muster the votes needed to block the bill by filibuster. The legislation could win final Senate passage by week's end.
Current federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race and national origin. But it doesn't stop an employer from firing or refusing to hire workers because they are lesbian, gay bisexual or transgender. The bill would bar such discrimination by employers with 15 or more workers.
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia have approved laws banning workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and 17 of them also prohibit such discrimination based on gender identity.
Sainz, a vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, said the most striking aspect of the ENDA debate was the division surfacing in the Republican Party — with several prominent GOP senators supporting the bill and yet Boehner signaling his opposition even before the Senate vote was held.
"There is no doubt that the American public is changing on this issue very quickly," Sainz said. "That's what makes what Boehner did today such a head-scratcher."
The Senate vote on ENDA was among a series of major victories for the gay-rights movement this year, highlighted by two Supreme Court decisions in June. One ruling cleared the way for ending a ban on same-sex marriages in California; the other struck down a 1996 law passed by Congress that banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
Gay marriage is now legal in 14 states and the District of Columbia, and bills are pending this week that would add Hawaii and Illinois to that group.
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