Commercial with gay kiss is reported to Conar for “brainwashing children”
Aired in prime time on TV Globo, a commercial that shows two homosexual couples kissing was reported to the National Advertising Self-Regulation Council (Conar).
Grupo Dignidade, which coordinates the campaign, was notified to present its defense within five days.
The ad is called “I hate eggplants”. In the video, created by the agency OpusMúltipla especially for the NGO, the mother-in-law offers her son-in-law, during dinner, a dish containing eggplant.
The young man begins to imagine a series of “cruelties” against the ingredient (drowning, stabbing, trampling, exploding), but, at the end of the reflection, he only responds: “No, thank you”. In the next scene, two gay couples greet each other with a “peck” in a restaurant, while the announcer says: “It’s the same thing with sexual orientation: you can disagree, but you have to respect it.”
The complaint was sent to Conar on October 14th. According to the complaint, the commercial “It's a way of brainwashing children”. The complainant also states that the video “shows that people are aggressive just because they don’t think it’s right to be homosexual.”
She also says that LGBT people “ask for respect, but forget to respect other people” and that the ideal would be “commercials that encourage children to become good people”.
Can someone explain to this human being that we LGBT people grew up watching films, commercials and soap operas with straight plots and that didn't mean we became straight because of that?!
The executive director of Grupo Dignidade, Toni Reis, states that “the commercial does not offend anyone's dignity, it only asks for respect for sexual orientation, given the high rates of violence and discrimination against LGBT people in Brazil”.
A team of 18 lawyers is already preparing the defense text before Conar, which will then evaluate whether or not the commercial should be taken off the air.
