An Italian-American mother living in Connecticut is calling on
grocery chain Stop & Shop to dump Barilla pasta over its
president's anti-gay remarks.
Linda Ferraro launched a Change.org petition on Thursday after
learning that Barilla President Guido Barilla had said in an
interview that gay people “can go eat someone else's pasta.”
“We won't include gays in our ads, because we like the
traditional family,” Barilla said during a radio interview. “If
gays don't like it, they can always eat another brand of pasta.
Everyone is free to do what they want, provided it doesn't bother
anyone else.”
He later added: “I have no respect for adoption by gay families
because this concerns a person who is not able to choose.”
Barilla later backtracked in a statement, saying that he “only
wanted to underline the central role of the woman in the family.”
“My grandparents moved to Brooklyn, NY from Italy and taught me
that family is more important than anything,” Ferraro, the mother
of GLAAD vice president Rich Ferraro, wrote in her petition. “I
remembered that tradition when my son Rich was a teenager and cried
at our dinner table as he told me he was gay.”
“I have a newsflash for Guido Barilla: I am proud of my gay son
and we are a traditional family.”
“I shop at Stop & Shop, and now that I dumped Barilla, I
think they should, too. Please join me and urge Stop & Shop to
take Barilla off their shelves,” she added.
As
of Thursday night, Ferraro's petition had gathered more than
1,100 signatures.