According to last week’s chapter five, there are three main factors that play a huge role in person’s social identity: They are a person’s social class, their race and ethnicity, and their gender. Unfortunately much of society will tend to make quick judgments about an individual based on these three main elements. Discrimination is the unjust treatment of different categories of people especially on the grounds of race, sex and age. We would like to think that our modern generation is one of the most open-mindedness, accepting, and nondiscriminatory yet (because in fact we have come along way since the Civil Rights Movement) however discrimination is still very active in our society. Treatments of harsh inequality can now also be found in the gay and lesbian community.
This past month, in honor of Father’s day, JCPenney decided to run an ad featuring a same sex couple laughing and playing with their children. The two men in the photo are actually real life gay dads who won a contest by submitting a family picture of theirs. After the ad had been available to the public, a group by the name of “One Million Moms” publically announced a boycott against the clothing department and urged others to do the same. Earlier this year, the same group made a fuss about Ellen DeGeneres being a JCPenney’s spokesperson. It seems as though a large part of our society in the United States wants to move forward and embrace homosexuality. JCPenney’s, Oreos, ABC Network, are just a few major companies willing to help lead the way however there are still many individuals and organizations who try and push us back.
