Elton John is corrupting your children!

[faceless]

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Either Elton's baby is in some way offensive or there's some serious homophobia going on here
26/01/11
mirror.co.uk[/align]
Is little baby Zachary sticking a tiny, perfect finger up at the camera while snarling like Johnny Rotten? Is Sir Elton John wearing a really gross, brightly-coloured outfit that would surely damage people's eyes if they caught a glimpse of it? Does David Furnish have his willy out?

No. We've seen the full Us Magazine cover here, and Zachary's fast asleep, Elton's looking unusually conservative in a plain grey suit and, if David is trying to furnish the world with with his bare naked bits, they're thankfully just off camera. Therefore, there's only one possibly explanation - Harps, a chain supermarket in Arkansas (that's in America, that big free world a mere swim away), thinks that "young shoppers" need to be "shielded" from the sight of two nice, rich, successful smiling people proudly showing off their gorgeous new baby.

But hang on a minute, cheesy family photos just like this one are on mag covers all the time. This makes absolutely no sense. Because it can't possibly be extreme homophobia, can it? It is the year 2011 after all. What sort of appalling message would that send out to vulnerable young people contemplating their sexuality, and indeed the world in general?

Sadly, this does seem to be the case. And suitably outraged humans are now urging other humans to complain about the extreme prejudice going on here and boycott Harps. We'll happily stop shopping at Harps - the closest branch to Canary Wharf is in Missouri, so it was always a bit of a trek for our microwave meals anyway - but we think it would be more of a powerful message if Elton and David themselves kicked up a stink about this ridiculousness.

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[eefanincan]

I saw the cover when I was at WalMart today and I don't know what the concern is... nice picture, baby is wearing green and white striped sleepers. You must be really homophobic if you can't even look at a picture like this.

[pirtybirdy]

Are they absolutely positive when doing their journalistic research on this piece, that it was the doing of Harps and not one homophobic employee who placed it there? I'm only guessing here, but I'm thinking that they did not research this. ;-)

[eefanincan]

I was just reading this same story on the dailymail.co.uk website, and I can't believe the amount of people that agree with the shielding of this magazine! Knowing about someone being gay doesn't mean you have to become gay yourself. Same way reading about the Pope being Catholic doesn't mean you have become one.

[faceless]

I was thinking the same pirty - I reckon it would probably have been some zealous manager who decided on this. But whoever did it, they should be blocked from public view and be forced to carry a warning for parents...

[luke]

according to the daily mail;

Staff say complaints from shoppers prompted them to cover the magazine with the 'shield' - the same method used to cover pornographic magazines.

...

a company spokesperson defended the shield, saying Harps bosses reacted in response to 'several' customer complaints at that particular store.

He insisted the move was 'in no way our opinion on this issue', adding, 'we do not have an opinion on this issue.'

...

After receiving a plethora of complaints, the store management have taken action and un-censored the magazine.

'In this case our store manager received some complaints and, as has been our custom, placed the shield over the cover of the magazine', said Kim Eskew, president of Harps Food Stores Inc.

'When we began receiving complaints at our corporate office, we reivewed the magazine in question, removed the shield and are selling the magazine in all our locations today without any shield', Ms Eskew added.

The shields are usually placed over adult magazines with racy covers.

'Our true intention is not to offend anyone in our stores and this incident happened at just one of our 65 locations, which when brought to our attention we reversed', Ms Eskew said in a written statement.

Just last week Elton John publicly bemoaned feeling like a 'second-class citizen' in the U.S. because of his sexuality and said he was 'fed-up' about it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ldren.html

[Stones]

a company spokesperson defended the shield, saying Harps bosses reacted in response to 'several' customer complaints at that particular store.

He insisted the move was 'in no way our opinion on this issue', adding, 'we do not have an opinion on this issue.'

He needs to get a memo to Paula:

I work at that harps story so i know the story first hand and NONE of you do. Why do you think that the public should be able to control what a child is taught at what age. If a parent of a child doesn't want them to be exposed to something because they think they are too young to understand who are you to think any different. you are not that child's mother. If you want your child to see that and be educated about it than you buy the stupid magazine and read it to them but stop trying to force it on to other people's children. that's just wrong. Just like if you were to go up to a random young child in public it would not be right for you to start explaining the birds and the bee's so why should a magazine be able to make a child ask questions about it when the parents don't want them knowing. Not to keep them sheltered but because of their young age.

- Paula , Mountian Home, Arkansas

[faceless]

If people like her don't want their children to be exposed to modern society they should join the Amish or something...

[SpursFan1902]

I just am not sure that anything I say here could make this situation any better or, which is more surprising, any more ridiculous. Some days it just doesn't pay to have an IQ.