By PopZette Staff | January 30, 2020
The Super Bowl is set to take place on Sunday, which means countless advertisers have spent the past few months working on the commercials that will air on Fox during the game. Unfortunately, it has just been revealed that FOX has refused to approve a powerful commercial about abortion survivors, yet the network had no problem with green lighting an ad featuring drag queens.
The pro-life group Faces of Choice is speaking out this week to slam Fox Sports for refusing to air an ad they produced during the Super Bowl, according to LifeSite News [1]. The ad originally ran during this year’s March For Life, and it tells the story of fourteen people who survived abortions.
Back in July, Faces of Choice submitted a thirty-second version of the ad to be aired during the Super Bowl, but the network was not having it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1YciyJG3WQ&feature=emb_title
“We were one of the very first people to submit anything to them,” explained Lyric Gillett, the founder of Faces of Choice. “We met every single stipulation that they asked for and every time we met the line they moved the line further to request something else.”
Gillett went on to say that she was initially told by Fox that they would get back to her by October about whether or not the ad had been approved, but she never heard anything else from them. After she repeatedly tried to get in touch with Fox’s legal department, she was finally told in November that all Super Bowl advertising slots were full. Last week, however, Fox announced [3] that more advertising slots had become available for the Super Bowl, so Gillett resubmitted the application.
At the time of this writing, Gillett has yet to hear back about the commercial.
Gillett expressed surprise that Fox asked her at one point to give them information about everyone who had donated to the ad. Though Gillett found this request to be “untenable,” she ultimately complied and handed over the information.
“I think it’s very clever what they’re doing,” Gillett continued. “If they directly said ‘no’ then we could say ‘this is asinine, look at the suitable ad that Fox rejected,’ but they haven’t directly said ‘no,’ they’ve ignored us, wasted our time, refused to give an answer and refused to either give us clearance or simply say ‘no.'”
What Fox is doing is even more offensive given the fact that the network had no problem approving a Super Bowl ad that featured contestants from the reality television show “Rupaul’s Drag Race.” Drag queens Kim Chi and Miz Cracker will be appearing in a fifteen-second ad for Sabra hummus products, according to NBC News [4].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ex5xnVm2po&feature=emb_title
Bob Witeck, a marketing expert for LGBTQ audiences, described the commercial as “revolutionary.”
“For queer audiences, [drag] is an art form and an ‘outsiders’ language,” he explained. “Reaching the Super Bowl means taking our language into every home in the nation and millions around the world.”
Sadly, abortion survivors will not be receiving this same representation during the Super Bowl. Gillett lamented that abortion survivors “have been ignored their whole lives and that they now faced being ignored again.”
“The main goal [of the commercial] is for every day Americans to actually see choice — to be able to look it in the eye,” Gillett told FaithWire [5]. “It is ironic and it is incensing to me that these survivors of abortion had their very voices almost stolen from them from the moment of conception, and now the media is doing that again.”
She added that she believes it’s important for Americans to see the faces of abortion survivors so that they can realize that they’re human beings too, and more than just a “choice.”
“Every single humanitarian effort, every civil rights effort that has actually made a difference has been through the voice of a survivor, and that is because the culture actually realized these people are human,” Gillett explained.
The Super Bowl is a sporting event that is enjoyed by people of all faiths and political beliefs, so it’s a real shame that the network being it is taking sides in a political argument. If drag queens can be represented during the Super Bowl, abortion survivors deserve to be as well.
This piece originally appeared in LifeZette [7] and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
More GOP Senators Could Defect in Impeachment Trial [8]
Actress Evan Rachel Wood Gets Major Backlash For Calling Kobe Bryant A ‘Rapist’ After His Death [9]
‘The View’ Goes Off The Rails As Impeachment Lawyer Alan Dershowitz ‘Triggers’ Hosts By Defending Trump [10]