Thread: Discrimination? Super Bowl network rejects ad with gay theme

Discrimination? Super Bowl network rejects ad with gay theme
Reported by: ABC15.com staff
Last Update: 1/30 9:31 pm


ManCrunch.com ad (YouTube) One Super Bowl ad has already been rejected by the network showing the playoff game -- and this year it's not one produced by Scottsdale-based Go Daddy.

According to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, CBS said the ad that shows two male fans making out "is not within the Network's Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday."

The ad, from ManCrunch.com, a dating site for men, shows two men sitting on a sofa watching a football game and as they both reach for a chip their hands touch and soon they're making out.

James Hibberd reports in The Live Feed that the network reportedly felt the site offering the ad was trying to generate free publicity by submitting a Super Bowl ad they knew was likely to be rejected and ultimately unwilling to pay for.

Reportedly a 30 second Super Bowl ad sells for $2.5 million or more.

A spokesperson with ManCrunch.com denied that the ad was a marketing ploy and called the network's decisions discriminatory.

Elissa Buchter argued that if the ad showed a woman and man kissing it would have been accepted.

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. IS REJECTING THE AD DISCRIMINATION?



Warning: The ad may not be suited for viewing by all readers
ManCrunch.com ad on YouTube

http://www.abc15.com/content/news/blogs ... rN7bw.cspx

I would hate to try to explain that ad to my grandchildren. No is not discrimination of being Gay. It is about appropriate behaviors in appropriate venues. Super Bowl is a family thing.

Good , I'm tired of all the gay and lesbian junk I have to listen to already .

A positive life story and the gay agenda are two very different issues. I still don't understand why we let a small minority of our society try to dictate what and what is not acceptable to the rest of society. I have trouble with this issue as I really don't know if it is how they were born, or if this is a life choice for them. Still, like with anything else, live the way you want, just don't try to stick it in my face.

A Super Bowl ad we can do without

Issue ads such as the Tebows' antiabortion spot may have their place, but it's not on this football broadcast.

By Tim Rutten
January 30, 2010

Today, there are few corners of our communal life untouched by rancorous political division.

CBS guaranteed that there will be one less when it broke with long-standing tradition and sold an evangelical Christian group time in which to air an antiabortion ad during this year's Super Bowl. If this were a football game rather than life -- or, at least, commerce -- it's the kind of ruling you'd want to send up to the box for a review of the call on the field.

The Super Bowl, which is this country's most-watched television event, also has evolved into the world's premier showcase for video advertising. Until now, though, the networks always have declined to accept issue-oriented or political spots. In recent years, for example, they've turned down ads from the liberal activist group MoveOn.org and the United Church of Christ.

This year, after a bit of back and forth, CBS agreed to broadcast a commercial purchased by the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, whose founder -- James Dobson -- is one of the religious right's most influential personalities. Both Dobson and his organization are longtime opponents of legalized abortion.

The ad reportedly will feature the University of Florida's superstar quarterback, Tim Tebow, and his mother, Pam. She will describe how, while working as a missionary in the Philippines and seven months pregnant with Tim, she contracted dysentery and fell into a coma. When she awoke, according to her account, doctors said the drugs they'd used to treat her virtually guaranteed a life-threatening stillbirth. They advised an abortion. She declined out of religious conviction.

Asked about the sudden change in direction, CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said the network had "moderated our approach to advocacy submissions" because it "did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms." He said CBS "will continue to consider responsibly produced ads from all groups for the few remaining spots in Super Bowl XLIV." Notice that phrase "few remaining"? This year, a 30-second spot is going for about $2.8 million. Perhaps necessity was the mother of moderation here.

Whatever its motives, CBS has made a bad call. There ought to be places in our lives that are free from profound confrontation. Focus on the Family has every right to produce its ad, of course, and CBS -- so long as its policies are evenhanded -- has every right to run issue-oriented spots. It really comes down to a question of taste and civility. You don't talk politics at the Thanksgiving table, and you really ought to be able to watch a football game without being confronted with another person's views on abortion, or the treatment of veal calves.

Is there really a difference between this sort of Super Bowl ad and the other 60-odd trying to sell you beer or cars or computers? Yes. One is a pitch; the other is proselytizing. We suffer the former as the price of life in a consumer society; we abhor the latter as a coarse invasion of privacy. There are moments when we open ourselves to moral persuasion, and moments when we're entitled to simple recreation. It's the sort of distinction on which civility relies.

Ever wonder how the Tebows' heartwarming story won nearly $3 million worth of Focus on the Family's attention? Both Tim and Pam Tebow are active, committed members of an evangelical ministry run by Pam's Baptist minister husband, Bob, one of the founders of Campus Crusade for Christ. This is hardly their first foray into social activism. Tim was home schooled and played football at a public high school whose athletic programs were opened to students educated at home by a Florida law. In the years since, mother and son have helped promote so-called Tim's Laws in other states to open public school sports to home-schooled children.

Both mother and son are vocal opponents of abortion, though there's a curious aspect to the story she's told in numerous interviews. Pam has repeatedly said that all this happened in the Philippines, where she delivered Tim in 1987. But as a letter to CBS from the Center for Reproductive Rights notes, the Philippines criminalized abortion in 1870. Since 1930, its criminal code governing abortion makes no exception to save the life of the mother and requires prison time for doctors and women involved. It's remarkable that Pam's doctors were willing to give advice that put them at such risk.

More than most, the Tebows have benefited from the reverence American society accords the religious consciences of its people and the decisions based on those consciences. The Tebows' story is a tribute to this country's respect for choice -- though somebody else will have to pay to get that message across.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/com ... 302.column

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MA. Republican Senator elect Brown says he supports abortion rights

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-187090.html

A very thoughtful essay in the WaPo by Sally Jenkins -- pro-choice but also pro-ad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02067.html

Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant; its critics areBy Sally Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow's pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We're always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

There's not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the "need" for abortions wasn't so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow's ad.

Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.

"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.

"Yes, I am," he replied.

The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.

"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"

That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.

Obviously Tebow can make people uncomfortable, whether it's for advertising his chastity, or for wearing his faith on his face via biblical citations painted in his eye-black. Hebrews 12:12, his cheekbones read during the Florida State game: "Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees." His critics find this intrusive, and say the Super Bowl is no place for an argument of this nature. "Pull the ad," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "Let's focus on the game."

Trouble is, you can't focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it -- and that is the genius of Tebow's ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn't just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers -- who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW.

Let me be clear again: I couldn't disagree with Tebow more. It's my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don't care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening -- or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

As a heterosexual male , I object to any such commercial. I shouldn't have to watch the super bowl, which is the epitome of manliness, and see two dudes kissing. I am for gay marriage, as long as isn't shoved in my face. Homosexuals need to learn that me seeing them in assless chaps during a parade isn't exactly helping their cause.