June is officially LGBT Pride month, as President Obama continued the tradition with an address last week at the White House.
“And as long as I have the privilege of being your President, I promise you, you won’t just have a friend in the White House, you will have a fellow advocate for an America where no matter what you look like or where you come from or who you love, you can dream big dreams and dream as openly as you want,” he said.
LGBT Pride month is a relatively new celebration, having been first declared in 2000 by then-President Clinton. It was picked up again by the Obama administration in 2009, where he called on Americans to “help fight prejudice and discrimination” everywhere.
And some high-profile companies have heard that call and acted – including the folks at Google, who have implemented a rainbow search bar across all queries relating to LGBT issues like “gay,” “gay marriage,” and “queer.” Google has always been a firm supporter of gay rights, having spoke openly against California’s Prop 8 back in 2008.
Now, it’s Oreo’s turn (Nabisco > Kraft) to jump in with their support of LGBT Pride month. If you’ve even just glanced at Facebook since Monday evening, you’ve probably seen this post shared by at least a couple of your friends:
The post is only about 12 hours old but has already received over 34,000 shares and garnered over 145,000 likes. It’s also approaching 19,000 comments, and as you can expect, there’s an exchange like this happening on every page of them:
+Ew. NOW i cant eat my favorite packaged cookie anymore. Goodbye Oreo’s. I AM AGAINST HOMO’S!
+I knew Oreos were the only store bought cookie I liked for a reason. I saw this on my tumblr and had to come the Oreo FB page and “share” this with all my friends.
To the Oreo company: Thank you. It might seem small, it might seem stupid, but like many have already said it helps bring a bit of faith in humanity back to at least this lesbian.
So thank you for knowing you’ll lose some customers over this but realizing the message speaks louder than the dollar.
+If this is “gay pride”, then DISLIKE. I’ve got nothing against gays, but there is no reason for this.
+*slow claps, tears at the eye*
But really, this is great! Once companies start showing support, then hopefully that tolerance will trickle down to the community and consumers.
And rainbow Oreos would be the best.
Although it may not always be the smartest decision to stand up for a controversial issue on Facebook, it’s definitely a sure-fire way to cause a ruckus. It doesn’t matter who Oreo pleased or who Oreo pissed off with this post, one thing is certain – people are talking about Oreo – 156,000+ right now, according to Facebook’s in-house metric.
