Posted on 12/01/2008 1:24:26 PM PST by voiceinthewind
IKEA’s Polish Catalogue Introduces “Ian and Steve” as a Model of the New Family
By Hilary White
December 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An ad campaign in the latest catalogue by the Swedish furniture giant, IKEA, purporting to depict “modern” life, includes twelve portraits of “families” that promote a “new model of living together.” Among these is the domestic arrangement of “Ian” and “Steve,” under the slogan, “the family is ... two sister souls.”
“Ian and Steve,” the ad says, have no intention of having children, but enjoy their “command centre” IKEA kitchen and herb garden.
The catalogue, says a pro-family Christian group, “promotes the extreme ideology of homosexual activists.” Fronda, a Catholic magazine, is encouraging readers to write to the company to protest and reports that readers have already sent hundreds of e-mails and faxes to IKEA demanding an explanation and that the company alter the catalogue.
Nevertheless, the IKEA spokesman in Poland, Karolina Horoszczaková, said that homosexuals are part of modern society and the company will not change the ad. “Homosexuality is one of the elements of life in modern society. Our company cannot ignore this.”
The ad tells customers, “Family life is changing ... Welcome to the new era.”
Grzegorz Upper, Fronda editor in chief, said that IKEA is promoting a lifestyle “which is not worthy of public promotion.”
“This [ad campaign] is connected with the strategy of accustoming people to homosexual relationships and then of legalising such relationships. This is done to establish their image in society as equal and then to legalise them.”
Fronda, a monthly Catholic magazine, is the work of a group of young Polish writers, philosophers, poets, artists and literati. The editors say their journal “takes Catholicism seriously and tries to strengthen it through a bold choice of topics, authors, and arguments.”
They have offered readers a model for a letter to be sent to IKEA, encouraging them to boycott the popular company with the simple message: “Your company ... quite clearly aligns [Ian and Steve] as one of the acceptable models of the family. For me, your customer, this is not acceptable.”
“The promotion of homosexual unions adversely affects the institutions of the family, motherhood or fatherhood that are so important for the public.” The letter tells the company that the erosion of the value of natural marriage, “which in accordance with the law is a union between a man and a woman,” is unacceptable, “especially at a time in which the family is in crisis,” particularly with the births of fewer and fewer children. The letter warns IKEA that the drop in the birth rate will affect the company’s future business in Poland.
Strongly Catholic Poland is under constant pressure from high-powered homosexualist lobby groups, entrenched in the European Union and United Nations bureaucracies, to accept and legalise homosexual relationships as the equivalent of natural marriage. In 2007, in a debate in the European Parliament, Poland was denounced as “hateful” and “repulsive” for its defence of the family when the country refused to allow the promotion of homosexuality in schools.
A vote was held approving an EU Parliament resolution chastising Poland for “homophobia” and calling for a fact-finding mission to be sent to Poland and for the “worldwide de-criminalisation of homosexuality.” The Parliament threatened to take the country to the international courts for failing to implement the homosexualist agenda in its laws.
In April this year, an international committee at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva questioned the Polish delegation on their country’s refusal to legalise same-sex partnerings and abortion, calling it a violation of human rights.
To contact the IKEA representative in Poland: +48 22 720 46 46 karolina.horoszczak@memo.IKEA.com
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
European Parliament Passes Resolution Vowing to Take 'Homophobic' Countries to Court http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07042608.html
Poland Pressured on Abortion and Sexual Orientation by UN Human Rights Committee http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/apr/08042501.html
Whoops, there is an I missing from the title. Could you fix that? It should read IKEA’s. Sorry.
Maybe they meant it as a Polish joke?
No big surprise. Last time I went shopping at IKEA, at least 25% of the couples there appeared to be homosexuals.
I hate IKEA, not because of the homosexuals, but because their furniture sucks.
So are teen pregnancy, drug addiction, internet addiction, and identity theft. When will their ad campaigns take these facts of life into consideration?
Hi Ian, Hi Steve.
You should get better furniture.
“Ian and Steve,” the ad says, have no intention of having children, but enjoy their “command centre” IKEA kitchen and herb garden.The ad tells customers, “Family life is changing ... Welcome to the new era.”
"Family life". A couple is not a family.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/family
"parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not.""the children of one person or one couple collectively: We want a large family."
"the spouse and children of one person: We're taking the family on vacation next week."
"any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins: to marry into a socially prominent family."
"all those persons considered as descendants of a common progenitor."
And then it gets into households that include the servants, hippie communes, office teams, mafias, and scientific groupings.
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Nothing about two guys who pair up for sex and gardening.
Oh wait, I get it now. Mafia. As in Lavender Mafia. They are a “family”.
I like this, an appeal to their business sense:
“The letter warns IKEA that the drop in the birth rate will affect the company’s future business in Poland. “
You would think that a corporate giant would understand that catering to a group not known for prolific offspring would eventually cut into their bottom line.
They are into short term profits. DINKS (dual income, no kids) have more disposable income.
Learn something every day. DINKS, hmm? That must mean for most of my life we’ve been OIMKs, and before the first baby was born we were OINKS!
You would think they would know better than to put such an ad in Poland of all places. I really hope Poland stands strong and doesn't tolerate the new European New-Think. But as the post following yours said, IKEA is just looking at the short term profit from DINKs.
Shouldn’t it be “Adam and Steve” not Ian?
Huh. There’s just something natural about a company that sells fiberboard promoting the gay lifestyle.
Well, looks like I’ll need to buy real furniture the next time I move.
Screw IKEA.
The Parliament threatened to take the country to the international courts for failing to implement the homosexualist agenda in its laws.
Yeah? And what are they going to do to Poland?
Invade them and force them to accept the wee sodomites? Just what power does this “court” have without the consent of people?
Poland gets a medal for telling them to bugger off.
[....yeah, I know that court is coming here and real freakin soon.]
Compared to the vast horrors inflicted upon Poland by the Nazis and the Soviets, this pattycake criticism by EU parliament must to the Poles have all the force of a wet noodle.
Warsaw Uprising, anyone? Homofascism is pale and puny next to the real thing.
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Yup, the EU is doing it's best to turn Europe into a cesspit of moral relativity [sic], pushing the homosexual agenda, abortion and similar depravity on every country. Fortuantely Poland so far is withstanding the onslaught.
Odd how the many Nazis and indeed, the Nazi philosophy, had a strange connection to homosexuality - and the agenda itself, which was fomented in pre-war Germany. In the 1930s and IIRC even before, in other parts of Europe such as Italy, homosexuality was called “The German vice”.
Hopefully the EU will dissolve eventually and become nothing.
Ian & Steve have to be mock homosexuals. The real ones I know wouldn’t be caught dead at Ikea.
I guess they’re faux gay!
“The German vice” (homosexuality as seen by other Europeans)
Now that is `verrrrrry interesting’!
Widespread homosexuality in the Waffen S.S. has been documented on the History Channel, using some rather disgusting archival footage.
“The Pink Swastika” can be read online as another source.
Anyway, the EU should wither away just like the `Holy Roman Empire’ that preceded it.
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