There hasn’t been a tear-inducing television commercial for a phone company since AT&T’s “Reach Out and Touch Someone” campaign. But now comes an ad packing an emotional, personal coming out story that is appearing on TV in, of all places, the devotedly Roman Catholic country of the Philippines.
And people are loving it.
“Welcome Change” is the name of this campaign from Smart Communications, and the commercial featuring a young gay man who struggles with a Facebook friend request from his father has been viewed more than 680-thousand times and received an enormous percentage of likes and shares.
One viewer commented: “Smart Communications, thank you for being on the right side of history,” reported Gay Star News, and the response from other viewers has been likewise overwhelmingly positive.
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That’s a good sign in a nation where antigay Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao won election to the senate with statements such as that gay people were ‘worse than animals’.
Perhaps that’s on the mind of the son in this ad, who finally accepts his dad’s request, knowing he is in effect coming out to him with all the photographs of himself in a same-sex relationship. He sends his father a text: “Dad, I’ve accepted you.”
The response from the father will likely give you goosebumps: “Me too, my son.”
Watch the ad from YouTube, below:
