This is a list of my favorite Oreo cookie flavors, in order:
- Peanut Butter
- Sm’Oreos
- Mint
- Original
This is a list of Oreo flavors I have never tried because they sound revolting:
- Carrot Cake
- Pumpkin Spice
- Watermelon
- Gingerbread
Also, Lady Gaga’s line of Oreos were probably the gayest Oreos ever.
Look, I’ve never been an Oreo fanatic. I mean, I like an Oreo now and then, but it would take something truly extraordinary to make me walk down the grocery store aisle “Supermarket Sweep”-style heaving packages of Oreos into my cart.
Something extraordinary like discovering that Oreos make people queer. Or want people to be queer. Or don’t hate queer people enough.
This is apparently what the National Legal and Policy Center (yet another in innocuously named anti-LGBTQ+ organizations) believes. “Is your favorite cookie company grooming children?” they ask in a recent ad. “What happened to the kid-friendly cookie we used to all know and love?”
NLPC is mad because Oreo has a formal partnership with PFLAG, which, as you know, stands for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
“Founded in 1973, PFLAG is the first and largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for LGBTQ+ people and their families,” reads the PFLAG website.
In other words, PFLAG is literally an organization for people who love their LGBTQ+ friends and family and simply want them to live joyful lives free of hateful nonsense. Truly the most wholesome group imaginable.
Well, unless your imagination is all kinds of messed up.
“Should a brand so identified with children also be so deeply intertwined with the aggressive promotion of the LGBTQ tactics and agenda of militant groups like PFLAG?” NLPC asks.
It’s pretty clear that NLPC believes that answer is a resounding NO. So much so that they are sponsoring a shareholder proposal to ask “the board of Mondelez to examine its associations with controversial external groups such as PFLAG to determine whether they present a significant risk to the health and profitability of the company.”
“Mondelez has placed its iconic snack label, Oreo, in partnership with radical LGBTQ activist group PFLAG,” the proposal reads. “The cookie brand sponsored the group’s conference this year, whose centerpiece theme was to advocate for the placement of sexually explicit books in school libraries.”
And, like, OK. NLPC has a right to its opinion. But I also can’t help but wonder, why now? I mean, Oreo has been the queerest cookie in the land for years, earning the ire of right-wing extremist groups like One Million Moms and targeted for boycotts.
But it’s not like NLPC isn’t aware of this history. It’s just that they believe that there is enough anti-LGBTQ+ momentum to effectively combat a cookie that considers LGBTQ+ people and the people who love them to be acceptable marketing demographics. They’re looking at the recent backlash against Target and Bud Light and they’re encouraged.
Of course, just because Mondelez makes Pride Oreos and donates to PFLAG doesn’t make them a truly progressive company. If it did, we’d see that in their PAC giving.
The Mondelēz International Political Action Committee gives pretty evenly to Democrats and Republicans, though their website only has records going back to 2018. This is significant because Republicans have been shifting widely to the right since Reagan, though this shift became especially accelerated and reckless after Trump was elected in 2016. So a nearly 50/50 split between Democrats and Republicans today is a good indication that Mondelez does, in fact, only care about helping elect people who will help their bottom line.
They have given contributions to some truly heinous anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. For example:
In 2023 and 2023, they gave to Sen. John Boozman (R-Arkansas). In 2022, Boozman voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which “would require the federal government to recognize marriages between two individuals regardless of their sex, race or ethnicity, and states would have to acknowledge same-sex and interracial marriages from other states,” according to Arkansas Online.
In 2023, they also gave to Congressman Brad Finstad (R-Minnesota). Last year, Finstad bragged about voting against the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), claiming it included funding for “taxpayer-funded abortion travel” and “transgender surgeries.”
Other notable anti-LGBTQ+ elected officials that Mondelez has given money to over the years include Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), David Perdue (R-Georgia) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Georgia), to name a few.
So, yeah. If you want to buy Oreos, go ahead. But Oreo is hardly a beacon of LGBTQ+ liberation.
D’Anne Witkowski is a writer living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBTQ+ politics for nearly two decades. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.