These ads, sponosored by the LGBT group In our voices, have been popping up in Schenectady, NY to the normal din of homophobic rhetoric. Pastors are, of course, up in arms because they fear the following nightmare scenario described by Rev. Alfred Thompkins of Calvary Tabernacle: “A thirteen-year-old looks at these billboards and says, ‘That must be it, I must be gay.'" (Much in the same way after I looked at a Baywatch billboard at the tender age of 13 and thought that I must be Pamela Anderson Lee.)
While I absolutely love the idea of showing more LGBT people of color, I'm not digging these ads. One, they're too hard to read. The color choices for the copy is some shitty neon color that gets totally washed out by the eye and the everything outside of "I am gay" is way to small to see, especially in a billboard. Two, the call to action is hard to read and not clear. Ok, there are gay black people and. . . . what. . am I supposed to call someone, read something, sign something? I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next and without some sort of follow up thing, there would be no way for IOOV to actually judge whether or not these ads are doing anything. Lastly, and probably most damningly, these ads do the opposite of what they are trying to do. These ads are seeking to normalize being gay (which I'm all for) but by placing the words "I am gay" (followed by some really pathetic rhyme) doesn't normalize, it accentuates, it makes them stand out. Imagine if in the family picture ad, the tag said something like "Families come in all varieties in Schenectady" or something like that. I know the lines not perfect but rather than forcing the issue, it allows the connections to be made in the viewers mind. It wouldn't say "I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it" but rather "all are apart of our community".
I long for the day when LGBTQ ads and media no longer exist, not because LGBTQ issues are squashed but because the community is integrated completely. I'd want to see an action movie where the lead just so happens to be gay, or a soda commercial where the lead just happens to be be trans. I think the key to normalization is not in saying "where all around you" but in saying "we are you".
