Freedom To Marry has produced a number of marriage equality ads in the past few years. No television station has refused to air any of those ads till now. Chatanooga-based WRCB has refused to air an ad about a gay soldier who had just returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and wishes to marry his partner in Tennessee. Apparently, it's just too controversial for the state currently. It seems that the good folks in Tennessee (along with parts of Georgia and North Carolina) have very strong feelings about the issue (pro and con), and it just wouldn't be in the best interest of the station to air the ad.
From Buzz Feed:
When station executives saw the ad, they refused to run it.
“It’s just a very controversial and personal issue, and we just choose to not air a commercial on either side of that debate,” Tom Tolar, the president and general manager of Chatanooga-based WRCB, told BuzzFeed News in a phone interview.
The ad crossed the station’s lines, he explained, because “people probably have really strong opinions on one side or other of the debate. It’s just an emotional debate for many people.”
The station, an NBC affiliate that also broadcasts in parts of Georgia and North Carolina, didn’t have a position on ads about same-sex marriage until executives reviewed the commercial featuring Ehrenfeld on Wednesday, said Tolar. “We had not had a request before to run an issue-ad like that.”
Ehrenfeld's response:
"I just got back in April from my tour in Afghanistan, where I put my life on the line to fight for our freedom,” he continued. “I believe so strongly in the right to our freedom, and I was disappointed that this is the position of the TV station, that they are not interested in engaging in an important discussion about those freedoms today.”
The ad certainly doesn't look all that controversial to me.
Television stations in both Nashville and Memphis will be running the ad over the next week.