“You’ll be fine, partner.” That’s the advice America’s favorite cartoon cowboy, Woody from the popular movie franchise Toy Story, is giving to young people struggling with homosexual attraction. In fact, “It gets better,” choruses a cast of Hollywood and entertainment notables such as Anne Hathaway, Kathy Griffin, Lady Gaga, and Adam Lambert, who appear in a television ad promoting both homosexuality and Google’s Chrome web browser.
The ad, which premiered during the May 3 episode of the weekly Fox teen drama Glee, features homosexual “sex advice” columnist Dan Savage (left), whose “It Gets Better” campaign is supposed to assure homosexual youth that they will not always be the target of “bullying” and harassment.
The ad begins with Savage, sitting next to another presumably homosexual male, recalling that “high school was bad” for him. “I was obviously gay and some kids didn’t like that — and I did get harassed.” Nonetheless, Savage advises kids, “however bad it is now, it gets better, and it can get great.” Furthermore, “it’s important for adults to reach out to kids and share our stories so they can picture futures for themselves that are worth sticking around for.”
With the Google Chrome logo prominently displayed throughout, the ad cycles through web screen shots of news articles on teen suicide and Google searches leading to all sorts of online answers for troubled gay teens — with a host of hip celebrities, police officers, and others assuring kids that “you are perfect and wonderful exactly as you are,” and that “there are a ton” of people just like them who have learned to celebrate and embrace their homosexuality.
But Alan Chambers of Exodus International, one of the leading Christian ministries helping men and women leave the homosexual lifestyle, asserted that the well-intentioned TV ad sends the wrong message to youth struggling with same-sex attraction. Chambers told the Christian Post that for the thousands of individuals his organization has reached out to, “it obviously didn’t get better living a gay life,” and only through leaving that lifestyle and embracing faith in God have their lives “become radically better.”
While Chambers indicated that he was not surprised to see a commercial where celebrities and even Fortune 500 companies endorse homosexuality, it came as somewhat of a shock to see a beloved cartoon character co-opted for homosexual activism. “Children all over the world, including my two children, are fans of Toy Story, and to see a character like that endorsing something that at this point children have no need to know about, it’s disappointing,” he told the Christian Post.
As Google and the “It Gets Better” project gear up to air the ads to a wider audience, Chambers stressed that it is crucial for the church to step up and offer a legitimate and transforming alternative to individuals who are struggling with same-sex attraction, as well as answers to the real problem of bullying and harassment. “I think that we have to promote the stories of people who have found an alternative to homosexuality,” he told the Post, along with doing “a better job at addressing issues related to bullying and violence and how kids have been treated at public schools.”
