In Proud Support of Oreos

Last weekend, the folks at Oreo put a picture up on their Facebook page with the slogan "Proudly support love!"

It was what I've been calling a "sextuple-stuf" Oreo and each interior layer was a different color. And, at the base it said "June 25 | Pride". In fact, it was this, but with "Proudly support love" in the upper left corner:

But that was it. There was nothing about pushing an agenda. There was nothing negative or derogatory against anyone. There was simply a positive message to "proudly support love."

As soon as I saw it, I shared it on my own Facebook page. Which, at latest count, more than 77,400 other people have also done. Almost 246,000 people have "Liked" the picture on the Oreo page, alone, let along the others who have signaled their approval through other means.

To me, it wasn't ever really an "us/them" situation. I didn't see it as hateful or against anyone. I looked at it as a company taking a simple stand for positive, affirming love.

And, I'm guessing, so did that nearly quarter of a million people who clicked on the image.

Today, though, I saw that there have been protests over the image. People are threatening to boycott Oreos, claiming this is tantamount to blasphemy and worthy of having the Oreo folks spend some time in the deepest level of hell. (Although, if that's where all the Oreos go, that's where I'm going to want to be, too...)

(I'm going to ignore the fact that the image is a photoshopped picture. And that all of the people who are up in arms are yelling and screaming about an Oreo which does *not* exist.)

What bugs the heck out of me is that all of these people, who are claiming to have God and Jesus and the Bible on their side - in other words, they're all calling themselves Christians - are up in arms because the folks at Oreo came out in support of LOVE. Yes, they did it using an iconically gay symbol, but their message was LOVE.

LOVE one another. LOVE yourself. LOVE proudly.

There was no hate in there. There was no "we love the gays, but we don't love the straights." There was no "we want you all to convert to homosexuality, and we're going to force you to do so by looking at a rainbow Oreo." And ther was certainly no vitriolic ranting.

But... Wow... in some of the negative comments that were posted, there was all kinds of vitriol, and ranting, and hatred, and namecalling. Some of it was the kind of thing that kids used to get their mouths washed out with soap for, even. And it made me sad, and a little confused.

Maybe it's just the way I remember my church teachings. Maybe I simply missed something along the way, so you'll have to tell me if I'm wrong, here, but didn't Christ primarily preach "Love thy neighbor"? I mean... In the New Testament, after the "eye for an eye" stuff got tossed aside, wasn't that pretty much his point? When you boil all of his teachings down, wasn't that pretty much at the base of it all? Sure, there were a lot of different ways that he said it, but... really... didn't that seem pretty clear to most people?

Or, you know, in the words of the campfire song "They'll know we are Christians by our love (by our love)." And, no, I don't know any other words to that song. Those are all that stuck with me. My guess is because they're the most important ones.

So I'm opting to offer my own proud support to Oreo and their campaign for Love. I sent them an email on their company website to thank them for their rainbow Oreo, and - just to show I was serious - went out and bought a package of regular Oreos on the way home tonight.

I figure that if they'll support me and my love, I'll gladly support them.

Of course, if they'd also make an Oreo with six layers of filling - rainbow or not - that would be a whole different level of love.