SOLE COLLECTOR: Sneakers

Nike is strongly opposed to discrimination of any kind and has a long history of supporting athletes regardless of their sexual orientation. The advertisement in question is based purely upon a common insight from within the game of basketball - the athletic feat of dunking on the opposition, and is not intended to be offensive.However, after listening to concerns expressed around specific executions, we have decided to drop them from the campaign to underline our ongoing commitment to supporting diversity in sport and the workplace.

Nike has a strong record of support for diversity and is proud to have been honored with a 100 percent score over several consecutive years in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation¹s Corporate Equality Index.

ztaufiq The ad is only homophobic if gay men liked having junk plastered to their face while being dunked on. Just because I’m straight doesn’t mean I would like to be posterized by a woman — good thing they don’t dunk too often — and have her area in my face, does that, in turn, make me heterophobic?

Don’t get me wrong, the ad isn’t very good: it deals with the simplest (or most marketable) aspect of basketball. But the ad seems to be based around a concept that now there is a new level of humiliation and pain you can inflict on the friends who have made the ill advised decision to play ball with you. I’m fairly certain that a gay ball player (excuse the pun) would be equally humiliated with getting weis-ed, not as a gay man but as a basketball player.

This ad is as homophobic as it is sexist.

Honestly, I think when we play sports, on some level we should leave our identities off the playing field, sexual or otherwise. I’m not saying we should apologize for who we are, but it’s ultimately unnecessary within this context.

Here is the Urban Dictionary Definition.

And while we are talking about homophobic ads being yanked - here is a Snickers commercial that was pulled for like reasons.