Here’s us at Talent Management thinking the narrow-minded bigoted views of the 50s were behind us, but it seems open signs of homophobia are still lingering to this day.

This week, JC Penney announced that openly gay comedian Ellen DeGeneres will be the company’s new spokesperson, but unfortunately the news was met with hostility by some.

One Million Moms – an online group of dogmatic conservative activists that whinge about anything outside of their dark age family ideals – has released a shocking statement on their website criticising DeGeneres’ appointment purely because she is gay.

The statement, which we’ll warn you is pretty saddening, reads: “Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families … DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store.

“The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there. The small percentage of customers they are attempting to satisfy will not offset their loss in sales … By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon, JC Penney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful to them over all these years.”

What’s even more disturbing is that this isn’t the first time the crazed campaigners have displayed such a blatant hatred for homosexuality.

Following the release of a Macy’s wedding service ad, which featured a 2-groom figurine on top of a wedding cake, One Million Moms posted a plea on their website asking mothers to send Macy’s an email to pull the ad on the grounds that it was ‘offensive’.

Civil rights leader Coretta Scott King once said that “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood” and we couldn’t agree more.

As an inclusive pro-diversity modelling agency, we believe that DeGeneres partnership with the brand is great move – anyone who is able to widen the strict and dated ‘ideal’ we’ve been subjected to, whether that be race, size, background or sexuality, has our support.