One Million Moms at War with JCPenney: Gay Dads in Father's Day Ad Speak Out

One Million Moms, the religiously conservative anti-gay organization, threatened to boycott JC Penney a few months ago when the retail chain chose Ellen DeGeneres as their spokeswoman. And now they are at it again for a harmless Father's Day ad, featuring two real fathers with their adorable children. The dads, Cooper Smith and Todd Koch, are "laughing off the opposition," much like Ellen did when she joked about it on her show. Kudos to JC Penney for sticking to their guns and not taking down the ad.

In fact, some speculate that JC Penney actually did it in response to the original boycott--a pretty in-your-face move. The new Father's Day ad shows the two dads laughing and playing with their kids, Claire and Mason, with the caption: ""First Pals - What makes Dad so cool? He's the swim coach, tent maker, best friend, bike fixer and hug giver--all rolled into one. Or two." One Million Moms (although, as Ellen points out, they have only 40,000 people on Facebook) is asking mothers to stop shopping at the store because the ad "promotes sin," is against "Biblical values and truth" and that "homosexuality is wrong."

Smith and Koch, in an interview, said the ad just reflects a normal day in their lives, and the criticism is just part of being gay. Koch said that "people don't people don't really think everything through...they make rush judgements on certain things without really understanding the full picture." They have a good attitude about the whole thing, which also might be partially due to the "overwhelmingly positive" support. For as many customers that the store would lose, they could replace, and then some. Ellen DeGeneres pointed out that many people showed their support on Facebook saying that they would start shopping at JC Penney more. Wouldn't it be great if every store featured an ad like this and then the 'Moms' would run out of places to shop?