Hasta La Creative!

About halfway through this two-and-a-half-minute film from conservative nonprofit the Catholic Vote, its treacly, overlystylized message becomes clear. These Catholics are nervous about revealing their stance on same-sex marriage because they’re (spoiler alert!) against it.

That stance is nothing new. What’s galling is the ad’s appropriation of LGBTQ themes to marginalize LGBTQ people and their rights under the law. The ad, with a straight face, position Catholics as a persecuted group for not having their message of intolerance (here ludicrously recast as its opposite) widely accepted these days.

The video even plays like a coming-out video for Catholics who are afraid to take the “brave” step of voicing their objection to equality. That’s a shockingly audacious tactic—disrespectful and despicable, to say the least.

Beyond that, it is rather illogical. You can’t reposition a group as oppressed when there is no movement to oppress them. And you certainly can’t equate being called a bigot for spouting intolerance with anything near what members of the LGBTQ community have experienced for decades. 

The empowering music is on point, though. 

Oh, and thankfully there’s already a parody…

A same-sex couple locked in an embrace (or is it a tackle?) smash through their home in slow-motion in a surprisingly inclusive spot for DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket.

These guys have a “friendly rivalry.” One roots for the New York Giants, and the other for the Dallas Cowboys. At first, viewers might think it’s just a moment of roughhousing between friends, but they eventually make it clear by saying that, while they may argue sometimes, “we’re just like any couple.”

Despite the nod to the Cowboys, the ad from Grey New York was almost certainly filmed before the team signed Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to be drafted into the National Football League. The spot broke last Thursday during the NFL’s first regular-season game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks.

Sports has factored into several pro-LGBT ads lately. To protest Russia’s anti-gay laws ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a Canadian equal rights group created a PSA that claimed, “The games have always been a little gay,” a reference to the visual association one might make concerning the two-man luge. While applauding the spot’s good intentions, some felt the humor reinforced stereotypes. Norwegian apparel firm XXL took a different tack with its mini-epic Olympic commercial with a lesbian twist .

Some commenters have disparaged the “little yippity dog” in the DirecTV spot as a homosexual cliche, but it otherwise has received a pretty warm response from LGBT advocates. The ad scores because it levels the playing field and presents its themes in the same loud, goofy and accessible style as the client’s other “Most Powerful Fan” commercials. Here, sports fandom becomes a fun, credible metaphor for inclusiveness. DirecTV called the right play.

Via The Advocate.

First, Amazon treated gay marriage like it was no big whoop in its latest Kindle ad. And now this. Microsoft has juxtaposed becoming a professional stuntman with getting gay married in its latest Outlook.com ad from Deutsch in New York. Much like the Kindle spot, the lesbian wedding here is treated as nothing out of the ordinary. That's right, a truck explodes (you'll remember the stunt driver from the launch ad for this campaign), and then some lesbians get married, and it's no big deal—as the happy Outlook.com user congratulates her newly married friend, pressing her hands together with an expression of sheer delight. Truly, when juggernaut advertisers decide that endorsing gay marriage won't hurt their bottom line, there's been a sea change in society.