The United States Army released a new series of recruitment advertisements titled “The Calling” last week, including one featuring an LGBT rights parade and lesbian wedding that has been slammed as “woke” or praised as “great to see.”
“This is the story of a soldier who operates your nation’s Patriot Missile Defense Systems,” the ad begins as an animated female soldier called “Emma” appears on screen. “It begins in California with a little girl raised by two moms.”
“Although I had a fairly typical childhood, took ballet, played violin, I also marched for equality,” Emma says, as images of a “Pride” demonstration are shown. “I like to think I’ve been defending freedom from an early age.”
The female soldier goes on to tell the story of one of her moms becoming paralyzed after an accident, but then working hard “to get back on her feet, eventually standing at the altar to marry my other mom.”
Emma then says she graduated at the top of her high school class, attended university and joined a sorority, but felt empty.
“Sure, I’d spent my life around inspiring women, but what had I really achieved on my own?” she asks, later adding, “I needed my own adventures. My own challenge. And after meeting with an Army recruiter, I found it.”
“A way to prove my inner strength and maybe shatter some stereotypes along the way,” she says, before introducing herself as U.S. Army Corporal Emma Malonelord.
“And I answered my calling” she adds.
The advertisement ends with the words “What calls you?”
The advertisement became the subject of mockery on Twitter, with one user pointing out its similarities with the recent “woke” Central Intelligence Agency recruitment advertisements.
“Wow. First it was the woke CIA ad, now it is a super-woke woke animated army recruitment ad featuring a lesbian wedding, an LGBT rights parade and women “shattering stereotypes” by joining the world’s largest killing machine,” Mint Press News staff writer Alan MacLeod tweeted.
Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh also lambasted the “woke” ad, asserting it makes America appear weak.
“Army ad about a woman with two lesbian moms who joined the Army to ‘discover her inner strength’ and ‘shatter stereotypes,” Walsh wrote on Twitter.
“We are the laughing stock of the world,” he added.
Others praised the ad, saying it was “great to see” the military embracing LGBT advocacy.
“Great to see the military embracing – and soldiers being able to enjoy – the freedom and individual liberty it’s always claimed our armed forces are there to fight for and defend,” one user tweeted.
“A lesbian woman enlisting to defend her right and freedom to marry and have a family with another woman – against those who would forcefully deny her this, would be an actual legitimate reason to fight, and for the military to exist,” the user continued.
“We WILL defend ourselves, and our freedoms.”
The CIA has released a similar series of recruitment ads over the last several months as part of a series dubbed “Humans of CIA,” including ads featuring an agent who described herself as a “cisgender millennial,” a man who “[grew] up gay in a small Southern town,” and a blind employee who talks about the agency’s push to “create a more inclusive environment.”
