There was so much coverage of the right-wing outrage and vitriol over passing depictions of gay families in a couple TV commercials earlier this year, from Coke and then Nabisco, which I saw reported on some of the news sites I follow, that it was very refreshing today to see this post by a gay father about what seeing these commercials meant to him.
Rob Watson: A Gay Dad Confesses: Nabisco and Coke Made Me Realize the Dignity LGBT Families Have Been Missing
Recently, Nabisco stepped into a similar limelight with its commercial “Honey Maid: This is Wholesome”. The thirty second spot shows a baby, in the arms of a man. Another man comes and kisses the baby on the head.
This time, I did not miss the subtlety. The minute I saw that simple scene, I burst into tears. That was me. That was my family. While the Coke commercial may have made history for the Superbowl, Nabisco made history for me. It was at that moment that I realized I had never, ever recognized my real life in a commercial before.
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I now understood what LGBT families had been missing in the landscape of America — we have been missing from the branding of the national consciousness. Naturally, there have been those who rudely trashed the Nabisco ad as they had done to the Coke ad before it. They did not get to me though or the euphoria of having a wisp of a thread in the public awareness known as the “TV commercial”.
They did not get to me because I see more clearly now what it is they want to take from us. The protest remarks are from ones who decry “normalizing” LGBT relationships and families. They do not want us to have dignity. They want our dignity, even if it is the simple dignity in being depicted in a commercial to hawk cookies. Or soft drinks. Even that is too much for them.
