Well, I'm willing to entertain the notion that my views boil down to being a gay man of a certain age, but I do not believe they are doing this because they are "starting to value diversity." It all comes down to money. We're not talking philanthropic organizations here. Best I can give them is that they're giving themselves a pat on the back for how evolved they are for featuring gay characters, but even that isn't very good. They don't give a damn about gay people as gay people.
Well, of course everything a publicly traded company does comes down to money. But they're not being philanthropic, they're trying to project an image -- to straight as well as gay viewers -- of progressiveness, which they feel will help them sell products. And sure, they may be trying to appeal to gay consumers. But note that they're not worried about the risk of offending homophobic consumers. Most of all, they want to appeal to as many customers as they can. It's really not a sinister process, it's how businesses work. (Not that businesses never do anything sinister, of course! They do sinister things all the time. I just don't happen to think this is one of them.)
To say they "don't give a damn about gay people" is like saying they don't give a damn about any of their customers. If somebody has money and wants to buy soap or whatever, the company gives a damn about them. In most cases, they probably aren't particularly homophobic in the way you're implying. For one thing, a lot of advertising professionals are gay themselves. Back in the 1970s and '80s when my mom was in advertising, she had lots of gay coworkers.
Yeah, but that's different. Or not. "Let's sponsor a gay event because it's an event for gay people." I really don't see companies wanting to hire gay people because they're gay any differently than companies firing gay people because they're gay. Just two sides of the same coin.
No, my company didn't want to hire gay people because they're known to be particularly good at developing medical devices. They wanted to hire gay people because they wanted whoever was the best at developing medical devices, whether gay or straight, and apparently they thought reaching out in that way would help increase the pool of potential candidates.
Back around Thanksgiving I once say a commercial (I saw it last year, too) featuring a large white family gathering for a holiday dinner. The door opens, and in comes a young-ish white man along with a young-ish black man. They are later shown seated at the table with everyone else.
Of course, they were hitting two demographics at once, there: Gay and Black.
OK, but why do you see that as cynical or worse? They're showing a gay couple in an ordinary -- even family and celebratory! -- environment, which must be helpful to diminishing homophobia in the general population as well as selling products to gay consumers. How would it be better if commercials only showed straight white people?
Lots of people, myself included, boycotted Chik-Fil-A for its homophobic politics (recently rescinded, I guess). Why wouldn't companies that aren't led by homophobic CEOs want to go in the other direction to generate good will?
That's also playing to a gay stereotype.
Yeah, but they're not "playing into it." The job of people who write about home decorating is to find people with cool homes and write about them. Often they involve couples, and many of those couples are gay. The magazine or newspaper would run the stories just like they do with straight couples.
Of course, the rest of the newspaper would quote gay people, too, in contexts where their sexual orientation was not obvious or relevant. But only relatively recently (past 20 years or so) have they begun covering issues involving sexual orientation or gender identity. It's not that they were necessarily homophobic or transphobic -- if they did mention them they didn't demonize them, but just didn't get into the subjects much at all.
As for commercials being aspirational, I guess I see that as a whole other issue. "Buy our product and you, too, will have a nice house in an upscale community with a designer kitchen."
Yeah, but the way advertising works is not quite so overt. When you see a commercial with Matthew McConaughey driving a Lincoln, you don't think, "I should buy a Lincoln so I'll look every bit as great as Matthew McConaughey does." But at some level it registers as positive. Which is why they don't show an overweight, unattractive, poorly dressed person driving the Lincoln. That applies to other products and, as you noted, class is as much an issue as other demographic factors.