It seems Mars, Inc. who owns snickers has offended the homosexual community with what many view as an Anti - Homosexual Advertisement starring none other than Mr. T. I mean the commercial is controversial but I don’t think it was disrespecting homosexuals. It definitely fed off of the Macho Man, Alpha male stereotype but I don’t think it was homophobic. Plus it was in Europe, you know they get wild over there!

MR. T yelling GET SOME NUTS WAS HILARIOUS. I am neither supporting nor condemning this clip, for my thoughts on homosexuality check out NO HOMO!

Mars has pulled a UK TV ad for Snickers featuring Mr T harassing a speed walker for being a “disgrace to the man race” after US complaints that it was offensive to gay people.

The American confectionary giant pulled the Snickers ad even though it was never shown on TV in the US - as happened last month with the Heinz Deli Mayo ad featuring two men kissing.

The Snickers ad, made by the same agency that caused an international furore with the Heinz male kiss commercial, was first broadcast in the UK on July 13.

The commercial, by ad agency AMV BBDO, features Mr T in full-on BA Baracus mode, the character he played in The A-Team.

It opens with Mr T crashing through a building on the back of a flatbed truck mounted with a Snickers-firing machine gun.

Mr T pulls alongside a man in tight yellow shorts who is speed walking and growls: “Speed walking. I pity you fool. You a disgrace to the man race. It’s time to run like a real man.”

He then opens fire, peppering the man with Snickers bars and forcing him to break into a run.

In the UK the TV ad barely ruffled feathers, the Advertising Standards Authority said.

The ASA received just two complaints and did not investigate the commercial for a possible breach of the advertising code.

However, the ad caused a storm overseas. A US advertising industry title published an open letter challenging Omnicom, AMV BBDO’s American parent company.

The Human Rights Campaign criticised Mars for perpetuating “the notion that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is a group of second class citizens and that violence against GLBT people is not only acceptable, but humorous”.

Mars said that the ad was meant to be “fun”, that it never intended to cause offence and has pulled the campaign.

“This ad is the second in a series of UK Snickers Ads featuring Mr T, which are meant to be fun and have been positively received in the UK,” said a spokeswoman for Mars.

“However, we understand that humour is highly subjective, and it is never our intention to cause offence. Accordingly, we have pulled the Mr T Speedwalker ad globally.”

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No Homo: A look into our prejudices

A few years back, Kanye West said, “the opposite of Hip-Hop is gay!” Take our extremely homophobic society coupled with the fact that being a black man and gay is the ultimate taboo, some thought Mr. West was committing career suicide. Well, I’m not saying the opposite of Hip-Hop is gay, I do think however that the issue of homosexuality is a topic that makes many men like myself uncomfortable.

I typically write about issues facing people of color, politics, and music; so where does this no homo topic come in. Is this not an issue facing people of color, is homosexuality not discussed in music, and we all know how it is woven into the fabric of political debates? While blogging and trying to find out more information on how to drive traffic to my blog, I was surfing through necole bitchie’s blog (www.necolebitchie.com). She had a feature that was dealing with this gentleman I had never heard of and some concreteloop website fiasco between the two. So I scrolled through her feature; dealing with how this blogger B. Scott and ConcreteLoop were having issues over people discriminating that ConcreteLoop had enlisted a homosexual as one of their weekly contributors.

Now at this point I don’t know who this man is, and I was actually about to click out of this post because it didn’t affect me personally. Before I left, I clicked the youtube link and low and behold I found out what all the drama had been about. To say I was caught off guard is an understatement; here was this openly gay man looking more like a woman than a lot of women. For me to sugar coat my feelings on what I saw would do this piece no justice, so I give to you my bare honesty. I’m sure I put forth expletives that would not be a delight to the young man’s ears. However, as I thought back to my spirituality, I remembered that I am no better than him and I had no right to judge. So I listened to his message and the content blew me away!

He was reaching out to a young man who had emailed him; and was contemplating suicide because of the ridicule he was receiving from his family and peers because he was gay. A young teenage black man was thinking about killing himself; gay or not, this young man has a world of opportunities to live for and call it naive of me but I was shocked to hear that such ridicule would drive someone so far. So I commend B. Scott for serving as a voice for these young men, inspiring them to be themselves and not allow OUR ridicule of their lifestyle to drive them to an early grave.

But deeper than that, what did this say about me? When talking with some friends about the idea of even posting the video to bring light to this issue facing our communities, it was constantly brought to my attention “Cedric, if you do this people are going to start to wonder about you”. If you didn’t know, the best way to assassinate a straight black man’s character is to call him gay. However, being gay is the new black, please get riled up because I just said that but think about the statement objectively before you lash out. A professor told me once that the plight of homosexuals is very similar to that of the history of blacks here in this country. People use the bible to validate their negative beliefs that these individuals are inferior and have relegated gays to the social outcasts that blacks once were.

I told my best friend what the teacher told me some years ago, he looked at me like I had lost my mind and said that college was getting to me. Was it really that far fetched; just take a look at our country’s constitution? When it was written blacks were not a protected class of people. Right now in 2008 homosexuals are not a protected class of people in the land of the free. I have become no better than the white person who is called a racist and says, “but my best friend is black”. When people say Ced you’re homophobic I say, “nah, I’m not, my cousin is gay”. While I am not homophobic, I recognize that I do have some prejudices towards the gay lifestyle and as someone who has been discriminated against this is unacceptable. I am human though and I admit these flaws, the closer I get to God the more I learn that I have no right to judge anyone and by me judging someone I am opening myself up to have my imperfect life judged.

Barack Obama said that he will look to take away the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military. I think people like myself have a policy with homosexuals more like “don’t show, don’t care”! I am not one who says, “gays shouldn’t be married, gays shouldn’t be allowed to raise children”. That’s absurd; some of the most competent and intelligent people in this world are gay, so I don’t feel their rights should be limited. However, this don’t show, don’t care policy comes out when we say “oh its ok to be gay but don’t do it around me”. My lifestyle might make some people uncomfortable; they have no right to tell me when and where I can express myself; I’m a grown man unless of course my mom has something to say lol. I say all this to say, watch the young man’s video with an open mind. I wrote this piece in hopes that we can start to have a dialogue in our communities and via the Internet about our prejudices and look to actively tear some of these walls down. If young men are killing themselves because of our ridicule of their lifestyle and we are all right with that, than I think there might not be as much wrong with them as there actually is with us. To minimize the life of another simply because of his/her sexual preference is bigoted hatred at its worst. NO HOMO!