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GLAAD Announces Long-Awaited Anti-Bullying Partnership |
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Written by Instinct Staff |
Thursday, 17 March 2011
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| Tags: glaad, bullying, initiatives, partnerships, wwe, wrestling, john cena, lgbt youth, fans, activism, discrimination |
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The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) announced an interesting and invaluable partnership on Thursday that we're certainly applauding. So which huge mainstream media corporation is at last teaming up with GLAAD to fight bullying?
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) will work with GLAAD on a comprehensive anti-bullying initiative after the latter recieved numerous complaints about homophobic taunting occurring on WWE's shows.
From a press release:
GLAAD contacted WWE executives and explained the problem after receiving our first reports. They then spoke to John Cena and the show’s writers. We have been assured that not only will such incidents not happen again, WWE intends to reach out to their adolescent audience, with messages aimed making it clear that bullying someone with homophobic taunts or for their perceived sexual orientation is wrong. WWE released the following apology statement to that effect:
WWE takes this issue very seriously, and has already spoken with our talent about these incidents. We are taking steps and working with GLAAD to ensure that our fans know that WWE is against bullying or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We strongly value our fans in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and apologize to them for these incidents.
We are very much looking forward to developing our relationship with WWE, and we thank them both for hearing our message loud and clear, and for planning to send an anti-bullying message of their own.
We're excited to see the changes that the WWE makes over the next few months and certainly don't underestimate the value of relaying an anti-bullying message to an audience whose ears it might not typically fall upon.
What do you think about WWE's willingness to partner with GLAAD?
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