Some of my best friends are gay. Suspiciously large numbers, it has sometimes been suggested to me. But that’s OK, I’m cool with that. What my friends get up to in the privacy of their own homes – or, indeed, the scary back room of their local boite – is very much their own affair. And if they want to get married (Hell-ooo! Why sacrifice the single greatest benefit of being gay?), well I’m probably OK with that too. I don’t believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice so I guess it’s only fair that gay men and women too should enjoy their inalienable right to be shackled to the same person, on pain of massive alimony payments, till the day they die. (Hat tip: William C Fisher; The Corner)
But here’s where I draw the line. I do NOT want my freaking ice cream tub to tell me gay marriage is a great and wonderful thing. Which is more or less what Ben & Jerry’s has done with one of its flavours. Or flavors, if you will. (See pic)
As you see, to celebrate the legalization of gay marriage in its achingly worthy, nauseatingly PC home state Vermont, Ben & Jerry’s has temporarily changed the name of its Chubby Hubby brand to Hubby Hubby.
What is my objection to this innocent bit of fun? Simple. I believe confectionary should be politics-free. Just because a pair of hippie ice cream makers happen to think gay marriage is an OK thing doesn’t mean that all their customers should have a message they may well find deeply unpalatable rammed down their throats. I felt much the same way about their President-Obama-endorsing “Yes Pecan” flavour earlier this year. “Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP already!” I wanted to scream at them. “Your job is to placate women, distract movie audiences, and bribe children. It is NOT your job to change the world.”
But I can tell you now there’s something worse out there than Ben & Jerry’s. Much, much worse. So bad in fact that I vow never ever again to buy it for my kids even though it tastes quite nice and offers reasonable value. I refer to the horror that is Mackies ice cream, which now uses its website to disseminate propaganda for the wind industry and which decorates its tubs with scenes of nature dotted with wind turbines – as if to suggest that these monstrosities have become an integral, nay even a desirable part of the British landscape.
“You can feel extra good about enjoying Mackies ice cream because it is made with renewable energy” claims their website. “Mackies business is powered by 3 wind turbines. We’d like to contribute towards protection of the environment for future generations of ice cream consumers!”
Oh really? And what about all those future generations of ice cream consumers who might have preferred the beautiful corner of Aberdeenshire where the Mackies have farmed “for four generations” not to have their horizon despoiled by swirling great wind turbines?
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