In an interview today (Wednesday, March 18) with CNN, Italian fashion-designer partners (and former couple) Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana clarified comments they made about traditional families and especially in-vitro fertilization, which set off protest, especially on Twitter, from Elton John, who insisted on a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana luxury goods.
Yesterday, over at CatholicVote, I outlined the controversy so far — click here for the full rundown, including quotes from both sides, and other celebrities who weighed in — but in brief, Dolce spoke to a magazine in support of the natural way of conceiving children, and that children should have a mother and a father. He also expressed reservations about using IVF to create children, saying instead that:
Procreation must be an act of love, now even psychiatrists are prepared to deal with the effects of these experiments.
Unfortunately, he also referred to the products of these procedures as “synthetic,” which, as I said in the CV article, they are not. John, who used IVF and surrogacy to produce children he’s raising with his gay partner, fired back at the pair on Twitter, followed by harshly critical remarks from other celebrities.
Dolce and Gabbana shot back, insisting they were’t judging anyone but that they had a right to their own opinions. From the CNN piece:
[Dolce] said he believed they could end the dispute: “Every people resolve everything by talk… we start to talk, the problem is resolved.”
The pair said they respected how people chose to live their lives, including the use of IVF, and said others should also respect differences in opinion.
“Every people [has] freedom for choosing what they want. This for me is democracy. I respect you because you choose what you want. I respect me because I choose what I want… This just my point of private view,” Dolce said.
Gabbana said they could have expressed themselves using better language to the Italian magazine, but appeared taken aback by the social media backlash.
“Boycott Dolce & Gabbana for what? They don’t think like you? This is correct? This is not correct. We are in 2015. This is like medieval. It’s not correct,” Gabbana said.
Click here for the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Gawker, while quoting a lot of the comments from rich celebs, spoke out on behalf of the rest of us:
But perhaps surprisingly—though perhaps not—the [boycott] movement hasn’t taken off beyond the feeds of multimillionaire Twitter: the intersection of people who both shop at Dolce & Gabbana and also care, even a little bit, what they think about anything, it would seem, is rather limited.
Oh, and millions of kids around the world — especially right here in the U.S. — created the old-fashioned way don’t have any parents and could be adopted, perhaps by someone rich enough to afford stuff from Dolce & Gabbana.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In