Campbell's has a new line of soups designed around Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and predictably, people are already crying foul of an LGBT component of the campaign.
The ad features a married gay couple feeding soup to their son. "Cooper, I am your father," one dad says, zooming the noodles to his son's face on a spoon/spaceship. "No, no, no, I am your father," his husband jokes, and delivers another spoonful. At the end, a voiceover announces that Campbell's soups are for "real, real life." The actors are a real-life married couple, and have previously starred in an ad for Sabra hummus.
The ad is part of a series of commercials around the #RealRealLife hashtag. "We wanted to show actual families, which means families of different configurations, cultures, races and life choices," Yin Woon Rani, Campbell's VP of marketing activation, said in a statement. "The American family is changing faster than at any time in recent history and it is now a true mosaic of shapes and sizes, all bonded through love, and love of good food."
But the usual Internet suspects are not happy with this. YouTube commenters are calling out Campbell's for being "political" by featuring a different type of family. They're quoting the Bible, calling the commercial sinful, and saying that representing a smaller part of their customer base isn't "normal" or "real life." And I'm not cherry-picking here; those comments have the most upvotes.
And it just gets worse from there. One Million Moms, the group known for protesting basically any positive representation of the LGBT community, is calling for customers to complain to Campbell's for "glorifying this unnatural marriage." If Campbell's doesn't change its tune, One Million Moms is threatening a boycott.
But anti-gay groups should have seen this coming. Campbell's has a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index, and was named one of the best places for LGBT employees to work.