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IKEA’s Polish Catalogue Introduces “Ian and Steve” as a Model of the New Family

By Hilary White

December 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An ad campaign in the latest catalogue by the Swedish furniture giant, IKEA, purporting to depict “modern” life, includes twelve portraits of “families” that promote a “new model of living together.” Among these is the domestic arrangement of “Ian” and “Steve,” under the slogan, “the family is ... two sister souls.”

“Ian and Steve,” the ad says, have no intention of having children, but enjoy their “command centre” IKEA kitchen and herb garden.

The catalogue, says a pro-family Christian group, “promotes the extreme ideology of homosexual activists.” Fronda, a Catholic magazine, is encouraging readers to write to the company to protest and reports that readers have already sent hundreds of e-mails and faxes to IKEA demanding an explanation and that the company alter the catalogue.

Nevertheless, the IKEA spokesman in Poland, Karolina Horoszczaková, said that homosexuals are part of modern society and the company will not change the ad. “Homosexuality is one of the elements of life in modern society. Our company cannot ignore this.”

The ad tells customers, “Family life is changing ... Welcome to the new era.”

Grzegorz Upper, Fronda editor in chief, said that IKEA is promoting a lifestyle “which is not worthy of public promotion.”

“This [ad campaign] is connected with the strategy of accustoming people to homosexual relationships and then of legalising such relationships. This is done to establish their image in society as equal and then to legalise them.”

Fronda, a monthly Catholic magazine, is the work of a group of young Polish writers, philosophers, poets, artists and literati. The editors say their journal “takes Catholicism seriously and tries to strengthen it through a bold choice of topics, authors, and arguments.”

They have offered readers a model for a letter to be sent to IKEA, encouraging them to boycott the popular company with the simple message: “Your company ... quite clearly aligns [Ian and Steve] as one of the acceptable models of the family. For me, your customer, this is not acceptable.”

“The promotion of homosexual unions adversely affects the institutions of the family, motherhood or fatherhood that are so important for the public.” The letter tells the company that the erosion of the value of natural marriage, “which in accordance with the law is a union between a man and a woman,” is unacceptable, “especially at a time in which the family is in crisis,” particularly with the births of fewer and fewer children. The letter warns IKEA that the drop in the birth rate will affect the company’s future business in Poland.

Strongly Catholic Poland is under constant pressure from high-powered homosexualist lobby groups, entrenched in the European Union and United Nations bureaucracies, to accept and legalise homosexual relationships as the equivalent of natural marriage. In 2007, in a debate in the European Parliament, Poland was denounced as “hateful” and “repulsive” for its defence of the family when the country refused to allow the promotion of homosexuality in schools.

A vote was held approving an EU Parliament resolution chastising Poland for “homophobia” and calling for a fact-finding mission to be sent to Poland and for the “worldwide de-criminalisation of homosexuality.” The Parliament threatened to take the country to the international courts for failing to implement the homosexualist agenda in its laws.

In April this year, an international committee at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva questioned the Polish delegation on their country’s refusal to legalise same-sex partnerings and abortion, calling it a violation of human rights.

To contact the IKEA representative in Poland:
+48 22 720 46 46

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

European Parliament Passes Resolution Vowing to Take 'Homophobic' Countries to Court
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07042608.html

Poland Pressured on Abortion and Sexual Orientation by UN Human Rights Committee
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/apr/08042501.html

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