The opinion piece in question was titled: “Please don’t pretend two dads is the new normal.”
The Southbank Centre and Center Parcs are among many companies who have stopped advertising with the Daily Mail following the publication of Richard Littlejohn’s homophobic column.
Joking that someone should “pass [him] the sick bag” after seeing a photo of their ultrasound scan on social media, the controversy-peddling author labelled the news a ‘publicity stunt’ and suggested the child won’t really be their baby.
“Here we have two men drawing attention to the fact that ‘they’ are having a baby,” he wrote.
“But where’s the mum, the possessor of the womb which features in this photograph? She appears to have been written out of the script entirely. We are not told her identity, where she lives… she is merely the anonymous incubator.
“No one is suggesting that homosexual couples can’t make excellent parents. But nor is everyone comfortable with the trend towards treating women as mere breeding machines and babies as commodities.”
Not long after the piece’s publication, Southbank Centre wrote on Twitter: “Southbank Centre reaches out to audiences through wide-ranging online and offline media titles, across the political spectrum.
“We monitor the environment in which our advertising appears, to ensure the values of a publication are compatible with our own. We have no future plans to advertise within the Daily Mail.”
Center Parcs followed suit, after people spotted one of their advertisements on the articles, and questioned whether same-sex couples would be allowed into their villages.
“We take where we advertise very seriously and have a number of steps to prevent our advertising from appearing alongside inappropriate content.
“We felt this placement was completely unacceptable and therefore ceased advertising with the Daily Mail with immediate effect.”
Quorn also stopped advertising, following a message from campaign group Stop Funding Hate. On Twitter, they said: “It was never our intention for our advert to appear next to content of that nature.
“We have regular reviews of media placements with our advertising agency. In this particular instance the advert has been removed at our request.”
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