Controversy continues to mount as comments by Barilla pasta maker Guido Barilla went viral on Wednesday after an interview with Italian radio station, La Zanzara (The Mosquito). During a live broadcast, an heir to the pasta making giant was asked if he would ever feature a gay family in one of his commercials. He said:
“We have slightly different cultures. For us, the ‘sacred family’ remains one of the firm’s core values. Our family is a traditional family. If gays like our pasta and our advertising, they will eat our pasta, if they do not like that, they will eat someone else’s dough. You cannot always please everyone not to displease anyone. I would not do a commercial with a homosexual family, not for lack of respect toward homosexuals – who have the right to do whatever they want without disturbing others – but because I do not agree with them and I think we want to talk to traditional families. The women are crucial in this. ”
Guido Barilla, who is a fourth-generation Barilla overseeing an operation that goes back to 1877 and is considered one of the largest – if not the largest – advertising account in Italy, added that while he respects the right of gays and lesbians to marry, he is firmly against adoption. “I absolutely do not respect gay adoptions in families, because[that] concerns a person who is not [one of] the people who decide.”
Pro-gay groups were quick to pounce on his statements. GLAAD, an advocacy group for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people, plans to contact U.S. supermarket chains and ask officials to speak out against Barilla’s comments and in support of their own LGBT consumers, said Rich Ferraro, the group’s vice president of communications. Ferraro said GLAAD had also e-mailed Barilla an invitation to meet with LGBT community members “and get to know how traditional we really are.” Ferraro’s mother, Linda, launched a Change.org petition urging her neighborhood supermarket to drop Barilla from its shelves, said Ferraro.
And Aurelio Mancuso, head of gay rights group Equality Italia, said Barilla’s comments were an “offensive provocation” and called for a boycott of the company’s pasta, sauces and snacks. “We accept the invitation from the Barilla owner to not eat his pasta,” Mancuso said. Many Italians used social media to voice support for a boycott.
Barilla, for his part, issued what has now become the standard non-apology apology. On Thursday, he Tweeted: “I apologize for hurting many people’s sensibility. I have the deeper respect for everybody without distinctions.”
