Food giant General Mills has denied
lesbian content was behind a decision to pull its advertising from
ABC Family's teen drama Pretty Little Liars.
The Christian conservative group
Florida Family Association (FFA) on Wednesday claimed victory in its
campaign to convince advertisers to drop their support for the show.
Pretty Little Liars targets
“children with homosexual propaganda and explicitly immoral
content,” the group said.
Twenty-four-year-old Canadian beauty
Shay Mitchell plays gay teenager Emily Fields on the television show.
In
a blog post, FFA's David Caton shared a letter in which the
company said it would no longer advertise Ole El Paso brand products
on the show, and suggested the show's gay inclusiveness was the
reason behind the move.
“We have informed ABC Family Channel
and our agencies that Pretty Little Liars is not a program
that we will sponsor,” Jeff Hagen, director of consumer services at
General Mills, wrote in the email.
An unnamed spokesperson for the
company, however, denied the claim in a statement to lesbian
entertainment website AfterEllen.com.
“We make advertising decisions based
on the audience demographic reach of a program and relevance for our
brands, and we make changes to our ad buys all of the time. That
should not be misinterpreted. The decision is entirely based on the
relevance of the show's audience for our brands, not because of the
sexual orientation of individual characters,” the spokesperson
said.