News satirists at the Onion have launched a mock-health awareness initiative which aims to deter teenagers from smoking using the tagline “Don’t be Gay. Don’t Smoke”. The rationale being sited in the clip is  that “teens fear being called ‘homo’ more than cancer”.

Articles and comments I’ve read seem to be divided as to whether this is just a hilarious video or whether it irresponsibly (allbeit unintentionally) promotes homophobia and strengthens the association between ‘gay’ and something which is bad, wrong and unhealthy.

I can imagine the rationale behind this campaign -- arresting imagery with a health message. Grab the attention of smokers jaded by the traditional anti-smoking adverts. Parody teenagers and their use of the word ‘gay’ to describe anything they don’t like.  Subtly mock homophobia. But that’s the thing -- they’re a bit too subtle.

The clips don’t make any strong anti-homophobia statements. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if they were simply ads on the Onion site and viewed by regular Onions readers familiar with their mocking style. However they’re not. These are video clips circulated online. The setting for the videos is a breakfast news show and so the ’serious’ style of the clips mean that  people who are not familiar with the Onion or don’t think there’s anything wrong with throwing terms like ‘faggot’ around the place simply have their opinions validated rather than ridiculed. At the end of the day you only question why you’re the butt of jokes if you know that there is a joke. What do you think?