Rainbow Oreos Spark Offensive Anti-LGBT Hate Slurs on Facebook
On Monday, Oreo updated its Facebook page to show an Oreo cookie with rainbow filling in support of pride month. While the image reached upwards of 200,000 likes on its page, the cookie giant faced heavy criticism in its comments section. The comments were filled with critics unsupportive of the rainbow cookie with postings like “you are supporting evil. Homosexuality is a sin, an abomination, and against nature” as well as “Disgusting. Good bye oreo!!! Hope the Homosexuals support you, they will eat anything!! haha.”
Oreo's pro-gay Facebook post comes in the month of June, which President Obama declared as Pride month for the LGBT community. This is the fifth official Pride Month in history (President Obama has declare four Pride months, and former President Bill Clinton declared the first pride month in 2000).
In general, the support for Gay Pride Month has been phenomenal — with hundreds of thousands participating in parades around the country. as well as with an overwhelming amount of support from large companies like Facebook, EA Games, and Google. However,even with tremendous support, Pride month has faced major criticism from conservative groups (unsurprisingly) that have stated they will boycott companies like Kraft because of their gay pride support.
On the bright side of the rainbow, there were many encouraging comments towards the Kraft Company, with individuals stating just how glad they are that Kraft is supporting equality with the LGBT community. The image even served as a great advertising tool to some like John Whittemore who posted, "THANK YOU, Oreo, for supporting equal rights & having the courage to say it. I'll definitely be picking up a bag of Oreo's next time I'm at the store.”
Other comments left on the site voice their concern over the ignorance of others against the gay community. Sarah Giordano remarked, “What did you think gay people ate? Rocks? I mean really? Gay people are everywhere. You’re going to boycott a cookie? You must have better things to worry about other than what gay people and friends and family of gay people are eating.” One Facebook user states, “It makes me literally sick to know there are still so many hateful, ignorant people out there. Even more sick to know they would stop buying a brand simply because they support people's feelings and dreams for basic civil rights.”
Kraft Company shouldn’t worry about its haters, though; they make too many products to make the regular boycotter’s life difficult. Their products range from Jello-O to Philadelphia Cream Cheese and they even own restaurants such as California Pizza Kitchen and Cracker Barrel. As one Facebook user stated, “I'm laughing because everyone is saying they're going to switch to Chips Ahoy instead, but they don't realized that it's made by the same company.”
