Remembrance of PSAs Past: A Retrospective of the Top 9 Anti-Gay Ads

It’s attack ad season! With less than a month until the election, everyone’s airing pieces on the way they’ve been victimized. Gay rights activists have been making commercials to explain the issues at hand when it comes to voting, but they really aren’t revealing everything. Luckily there are homophobic super-PACs that have video cameras and a few thousand dollars worth of airtime to remind voters how terrifying and perverted we LGBT people are. We may seem like normal, everyday citizens but we’re actually giant bullies with a sinister Gay Agenda. We’re merely pretending we want to get our rights because in reality we won’t be satisfied until we’ve taken theirs away!

Our Official Logo Via Gay Family Values

You know what guys? They’re 100% right! I’ve learned so many lessons about my Gay Agenda thanks to them! I thought LGBT Americans just wanted to be treated like more than second class citizens, but it turns out that it’s so much more! Take a gander at the past few years of anti gay-marriage ads so you know which issues are really at hand this election season.

(Warning: Although this is meant as satire, you should still grab an air-sickness bag because the commercials will either make you laugh until milk comes out your nose or vomit out of rage.)

1. What’s Marriage? – Protect Marriage

“Yes on Prop 8” warned Californians about the inadequacy of gay parents in 2008. If gay people have children, we aren’t going to know how to educate them on reproduction because we don’t have all of the relevant bits! Society has never evolved past the words “mommy” and “daddy” so gay parents won’t know what to do! Clearly our only method of defense will be to insulate our children from the critical nay-sayers and take them away from their friends. Luckily Protect Marriage is there to stop us!

2. Gathering Storm – National Organization for Marriage

In 2009 NOM managed to get their hands on our Gay Agenda and leaked our giant storm plans. Each time we say we’re trying to get equal rights, we’re really trying to take away the freedoms of homophobic doctors and parents that don’t want to have to think about gay people. We’re taking the issue way beyond gay marriage and we’re not going to stop until we change the way everyone lives! And we would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!

3. Dare to Stand – Illinois Family Institute

When it comes to bullying, LGBT students aren’t the victims, people of faith are! One day a year gay people use their unlimited power to remove the rights of homophobic religious people by forcing them to stay silent. The Day of Silence masquerades as an organization raising awareness of the problems facing queer students, but they’re really indoctrinating impressionable youth into thinking gay is okay!

4. I’m Confused – National Organization for Marriage

Gay people and their marriages are everywhere! At first we were just on everyone’s marriage license, but now we’re in the schools too! Teaching same-sex marriage to students (which means what, exactly?) is really a ploy to make parenthood uncomfortable for everyone! Gay parents and people won’t be satisfied until children are asking their parents and grandparents about the world at large! Who wants to talk to their children? Worst of all, gay people are going to make schools will teach students a new way of thinking! NOM and New Hampshire know that’s not what the education system is for!

5. New Morning – Campaign for American Values PAC

We gay people are using our superpowers to go back in time and steal America’s votes! We conspired with Obama to try to change all of the gay marriage-hating Obama supporters into gay marriage-loving Obama supporters! We all know that even if you support Obama you sure as fuck didn’t mean to endorse gay marriage. Who wants to be a flip flopper? This isn’t the change you voted for! CFAV knows that this is the one issue that Romney will never flip flop on!

6. Marriage is More – Maryland Marriage Alliance

Gay parents are ruining future generations by teaming up with Death and Divorce to prevent children from being raised by a mother and a father! We’re going to ruin all the children! Everyone deserves love and respect, as long as they keep their hands off of the definition of marriage! But we gay people are selfish and audacious enough to think we have the right to redefine marriage!

7. Good of Marriage – Minnesota for Marriage

I’m glad Minnesota knew what we were really up to. We’re pretending marriage is about the relationship between two people when it’s really just about God. Once we pass the referendum, we’re going to take away voters’ rights because as everyone knows, voters and gay marriage supporters are mutually exclusive parties.

8. Consequences of Redefining Marriage – Preserve Marriage Washington

Gay people are trying to indoctrinate tolerance and that just isn’t cool. Americans deserve the right to spout hate speech as freely as they want, but we gay people are going to unjustly hold them accountable for their actions. We’re going to use “the law” against them and pretend that Washingtonians are being “discriminatory” when they only support man-lady marriage. If we’re willing to go up against the beloved Chick-Fil-A, who knows which homophobic organization gay people will unfairly attack next!

9. Don Mendell – Protect Marriage Maine

Gay marriage supporters are just trying to take away people’s jobs. We’re planning on having everyone fired if they don’t push our gay agenda. We’re trying to dismiss upstanding counsellors and revoke their licenses just because they publicly stated they are against certain groups of people. Once we get our way, gay people will dismiss whomever they dislike, including Teachers of the Year.

I hope you learned your lesson about how sneaky and evil we LGBT truly are. So really now, if there’s one thing you think about this election season, it should be how your actions are affecting the children and the plight of the of the poor, straight homophobe. They deserve our rights too!

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Kristen

Hailing from Vancouver, Kristen's still trying to figure out how to survive Montreal's Real Legitimate Canadian Winter. So far she's discovered that warm socks, giant toques and Tabby kittens all play a role in her survival. Her ultimate goal is to rank higher than KStew in the "Kristen + Autostraddle" Google Search competition.

Kristen has written 139 articles for us.

56 Comments

  1. Holy shit that Dare to Stand ad. I have never seen six and a half minutes of such overblown melodrama in my life.

    • I sat there and watched the entire thing while going “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS EVEN.” Do they really believe that? I just don’t see how anyone could see the Christians being victims/taken advantage of in any of these situations.

  2. I mean, I’m sitting in a hallway so I can’t watch any of the vids but omg Kristen Kommentary = FABULOUS

  3. And my faith in humanity goes down just a little bit more. I need to go watch the “Same Love” video to balance things out.

  4. It’s hard to even scoff laugh at these when you think about the kids they got to say this shit. I can imagine someone sitting those kids down and saying “now all you have to do is repeat this: if my dad married a man, who would be my mom?”
    It makes my whole body want to be sick.

    • My sentiments exactly! There are homophobic stage parents behind all of these ads. WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

      • They’re corrupting the children by manipulating them in order to promote the idea that homosexuals are corrupting the children!
        I usually love a tasty slice of irony cake but THIS IS TOO MUCH!

        • If it makes you feel any better, I was taken to pro-life rallies and can distinctly remember agreeing with all sorts of horrible homophobic crap when i was a little kid. I seem to have grown out of it :P

  5. I cringed through all six minutes of that Dare to Stand ad. Like how did they make that and avoid doing any sort of research about Day of Silence? For some reason, I don’t remember the part where we lined up for duct tape insepections. Or doing it in elementary school.

  6. I maintain that NOM’s use of the phrase “rainbow coalition” is still the worst best thing ever.

    • My sentiments exactly. I was still able to laugh at that video. Then it hit the duct tape wearing children and it got ridiculous and outrageous beyond even my sense of humor.

  7. There are absolutely no words to describe the sheer stupidity and bigotry of these organisations. They make me so mad I can’t even fathom how they sleep at night.

    P.S.: Thank you for bringing these to my attention all in one place – I am writing my dissertation on the homophobia of the Christian Right in America, so they will come in handy.

  8. Because when you fire a homophobe for not living up to the standards required of their profession, it’s an attack on religious freedom. When you fire a queer it’s protecting everyone’s rights.

  9. I honestly had to stop at #5. This just makes me so angry. And not even just angry but really hurt- why do people think they need to make us feel like less of a person? It’s just not right.

  10. Oh my God, #5! New Morning! I love when the reassuring yet dominant white man looks right into the camera and tells his poor wife what they can do. Thanks, guy!

  11. I started reading this while I ate my lunch, and then I had to stop eating my lunch… I don’t know if I can ever eat lunch again.

  12. that last ad really killed me though. I wish I had statistics on how many LGBT people get FIRED just for being themselves vs. these religious whack jobs who SHOULD get removed for discriminating against people.

  13. The badly done CC for these are fucking hilarious, and makes about as little sense as the ads themselves do.

  14. I couldn’t finish watching these. I had to stop at “we can vote for someone with real values” and Romney/Ryan crossed the screen. Jesus, seriously?

  15. oh i’m afraid too! of how people can use such low strategies as inciting fear and the belief that change is bad because everything is already perfect. but what ashames me more is such an unabashed short sightedeness of things said that simply never made sense and are being used as an argument. it’s so important to have patience to continue deconstructing these arguments.
    (http://faculty.uca.edu/dawnj/Corvino.pdf)
    ..and everybody knows that babies come from storks! duh
    education where are you?

    • i know, right? also like why is everyone ignoring the fact that children are ALWAYS confused when they find out where babies come from. it’s yucky!! sex is weird and doesn’t make sense to a 5-year old, period. also there’s always the “but my friend’s sister/our cousin/my tutor’s friend/whoever has a baby, and SHE’s not married” thing, on top of everything else.
      i remember in third grade when i asked my mom what a blow job was (i know, right! i heard someone mention it at a sleepover which, why weren’t we talking about like my little pony?) and bless her soul she tried to explain it. i was like WHY WOULD SOMEONE DO THAT EW EW EW.
      so “the children will be sooo confused” doesn’t exactly make sense as an argument.

  16. I really like the mysterious, indefinable yet ominous ~~CONSEQUENCES~~ that half these ads refer to.

  17. I love the “Oh noes the children will be CONFUSED” as if confusion is some horrible alien thing and not, like, the default state of childhood.

    • Kinda makes me wonder how some of the luminaries behind the “confused child” ads would deal with Abraham and Isaac. Or the Book of Joshua, where God says genocide, looting, and war rape are A-okay if you’re doing it to people of another religion. Seems like that stuff would confuse kids more than “marriage makes our love official whether or not we want to/are capable of having kids.”

  18. In #5 – I thought Patriot’s Day in April was only celebrated in Massachusetts? They still celebrate it there. I had the day off in college. I don’t think it was ever celebrated in Illinois. Can’t even get that part right.

  19. wow. its the people who made these ads that made me hate myself. so glad i realized im above their shit. and if all this is about “keeping the children safe” what happens when said child is gay and your telling them they are wrong and shouldnt be able to have normal familys like the rest of the world??

  20. Even my cat thinks these are ridiculous. No seriously she hopped up on my bed, and watched them with me. Then licked my nose and asked why everyone isn’t as intelligent as I am.

  21. I found it interesting and telling that in the Preserve Marriage Washington ad (#8), the “professionals” were all men.. doctors, lawyers, etc, except for the one woman in a hat. Perhaps a nurse? Or a flight attendant? Not really sure. It shouldn’t be too surprising that PMW would be a supremely sexist organization. Boo.

  22. I don’t understand when these people think that the children are being “taught gay marriage”. In between being taught to read and tie their shoes and how to add and subtract? I’ve worked in a few elementary schools and there is no class called “the social institution of marriage”.

  23. Went to the so-called “Minnesota for Marriage” webpage. Experienced extreme trauma. Clicked the back button until I got back to autostraddle. safe place. safe now. safe… relax…. you’re not on that scary webpage anymore.. safe…

  24. I’m always amazed by how badly written these things are. Maybe it’s just that the truly talented and creative people in advertising are gay, and therefore, unavailable?

  25. In the “rainbow coalition” ad, I’m still confused about how the doctor would be forced to choose between her faith and her job. By letting a gay person see a dying same-sex partner? Or, holy shit, actually treating a disgusting queermo instead of letting them die?! Seriously, do people just accept this paranoid half-anecdote on its face or is there actually some way that doctors have to do things against their religion when gay people are involved.

    Feeling all the anger at the arrogant victim complex in the “Dare to Stand” ad. I can’t anymore. I just can’t.

  26. I like the focus in on the “A child is more than a test score” sign in #3. Oh, the humanity/huge-manatee!

  27. That “people of faith are being told to sit in the back of the bus” comment was absolutely unacceptable. Period.

  28. I alternated between hysterics and fiery, fiery rage faster than an AC. Seriously, if I had a quid for every time I heard the words ‘Marriage is a union between one man and one woman’…
    Actually, it reminds me of a video I saw on what a ‘bible based marriage’ actually is (E.G. between one man and 200 concubines).

    Some of these must be parody. They just have to be. Not only are they so ridiculously over the top, it’s the cheesy phone-line-on-hold music.
    ‘Rainbow Coalition’ REALLY NOM.
    My heart literally stopped when I saw the word ‘Romney’ on my screen.
    I can’t believe you have to deal with these actually on your TV.

  29. Man, watching (and hearing) anti-gay garbage makes me so ticked off. It makes me feel like punching Fred Phelps in the throat or something. Also, Mitt Romney is an ass. He better not win the election (I’m Canadian, but he could possibly be as bad as Bush)! Eew, I’m going to a Catholic highschool (I’m non-denominational). At least we haven’t really talked about homosexuality this year yet.

    Man, I’m so glad I’m Canadian! I was so excited when same-sex marriage was made legal. Then I got confused when I started going to a Christian middle school. Whatever, I’m 16 now (I must have been less than 10 at the time), and I found out the beginning of grade 10 last year that I was lesbian (actually, I thought I was bi…).

  30. All your self-indulgent justification aside…IF being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender was the result of genetics as you all seem to suggest(rather than a CHOICE YOU MADE)…then we should NOT have any LGBT folks left by now since there is no way for you to reproduce anally.
    At least by self identifying as LGBT you achieve your primary goal of directing attention to yourself…now let’s move on and you can rejoin the remaining 97% of the world population that is heterosexual! And by the way nobody is “homophobic”…I mean “a FEAR of homosexuals” ~ really ~ what’s to “fear”???!!!

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