Bay Windows - September 25, 2003
Ethan Jacobs, ejacobs@baywindows.com.

The ads, commissioned by the two health service providers and created by the HHC's designer, Alberto Bonello, will run primarily on buses in Hartford's South End, which has a sizable Latino community. While ad campaigns around social issues are hardly new, in doing research on the project Bonello found that there were very few Spanish-language media campaigns specifically addressing the Latino community on the topic of homophobia.

"What I see with the Hispanic community is because of our traditions, it is very difficult for a family to accept when someone in our family is a homosexual," said Bonello.

Bonello linked those traditions to religious beliefs and the role of the church, but he said that the ads, at least at first, would avoid criticizing religious institutions for fear of alienating their audience.

He explained that at first HHC and HGLGC were hoping to stage a much larger media campaign about homophobia in the Latino community, but the grant proposals for that campaign fell through. When CTTransit, which provides public transportation to the greater Hartford area, offered to donate advertising space to the campaign, HHC and HGLGC retooled the project to make it a bus campaign.

The first ad in the series, which will debut at an October 2 press conference, features a picture of a young Latino man and the caption, "La homofobia es... Miedo. Ignorancia. Inseguridad. Violencia." Translated into English the caption reads, "Homophobia is... Fear. Ignorance. Insecurity. Violence."

Subsequent ads will feature photos of people representing different members of the traditional family, Bonello said. One upcoming ad will feature a grandfather and a grandchild with anti-homophobia captions similar to the first ad.

"One of the things that I wanted to do when the campaign came up was to use a real person for the campaign," said Bonello, who insisted that the ads contain photos of models rather than illustrations or stock photography. He said that would emphasize the message that homophobia was a problem affecting real people in the Latino community, not just an abstract issue.

One of the ways in which homophobia affects the Latino community, said Linda Estabrook, executive director of HGLHC, is by negatively impacting health care. She said that a major factor HGLHC and HHC's decision to focus on homophobia is that it prompts both patients and health care providers to make poor decisions.

"[There's the example of] a client going in to get services and not revealing [their] sexual orientation and sexual activity, for example, where it might be a key part of their healthcare needs," said Estabrook. She said that the stereotyped assumptions of a healthcare provider might prove just as much of an obstacle as the fear on the part of a client.

"They might not get screened for HIV, for example, if they're assumed to be heterosexual," she said.

This partnership is not HGLHC's first collaboration with HHC. The organizations have previously worked together in putting together different HIV prevention programs. Additionally, HGLHC has partnered with other local programs on issues around GLBT domestic violence and with other AIDS service providers, among others.

Estabrook agreed with Bonello that using live models was key to the campaign's success. She believes that the ads will humanize GLBT people in the eyes of people who may have had little exposure to out gay and lesbian people.

"I think one of the things that we're trying to accomplish with this is the whole aspect of the personal interaction between one person and another," said Estabrook. "Having pictures of people and not presenting [homophobia] as a global thing. ... As you develop the understanding that you're interacting with GLBT people all the time ... [you will] get to know us personally, and we're not going to be a threat to you."

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