An American supermarket chain has caused outrage, by covering displays of family's first image to 'protect children'
An American supermarket chain has sparked outrage across the US, after covering magazine images of Elton John, David Furnish and their new baby Zachary with a ‘family shield’ on shelves in their shop.
PICS! ELTON AND DAVID INTRODUCE BABY ZACHARY
The Arkansas Harp grocery store deemed the picture – on the cover of magazine Us – too ‘offensive,’ and revealed they added the special cover to ‘protect children’ in response to several complaints from customers.
But earlier this week furious shopper Jennifer Huddleston snapped a picture of the special cover, and took to Twitter to vent her fury.
‘This was taken at my local grocery store,' she wrote on the social networking site. 'I was shocked and horrified.
'They are saying they need to keep children from seeing it, because it is a gay family.'
At first, store bosses defended their use of the shield – which is usually reserved for pornographic material, revealing the move was ‘in no way our opinion on this issue. We do not have an opinion on this issue.’
But Harps later backtracked, releasing an official statement on the incident.
‘In this case our store manager received some complaints and, as has been our custom, placed the shield over the cover of the magazine', company president Kim Eskew said.
‘When we began receiving complaints at our corporate office, we reivewed the magazine in question, removed the shield and are selling the magazine in all our locations today without any shield', she added.
'Our true intention is not to offend anyone in our stores and this incident happened at just one of our 65 locations, which when brought to our attention we reversed'
In a statement on it’s blog, The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said the cover should ‘never have been put up in the first place’, adding: ‘Obviously, someone felt that shoppers should not have to look at this smiling, happy couple and their newborn baby.’
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