"Do you have her papers?" the blond asks the brunet. "Yeah, in the diaper bag." "The diaper bag -- can you believe this?" says the blond. "We're a family." "You'll make a great mom," whispers the brunet. "So will you."

Of course, John Hancock is hardly the first national advertiser to feature a gay couple in such a matter-of-fact way. Ikea did it years ago, showing a gemütlich male couple feathering their love nest with inexpensive Swedish furniture. But whereas Ikea was looking to position itself as a young, modern, varied brand for young, modern, varied people, this was clearly not John Hancock's aim. Having used the buzziness of lesbianism as a dramatic device to get attention, the company seemed unsure of where to go next. So it backtracked, implying it had all been an accident.

"It was never our intent to endorse or to dwell on a particular lifestyle," explains Burgay, the company's vice president. Complaints from Christian groups such as the American Family Association convinced Burgay that he "needed to retool the commercial, to help bring the focus on the child, rather than the issue of the child's parents ... We felt we could accommodate people's concerns, and still have a hell of an impactful spot."

Before making its Olympic debut, the ad was recut, with the final lines, which make the lesbian relationship explicit, snipped out. Burgay says the ad agency, Boston's Hill, Holliday, was happy to help. "They understand our business," he says appreciatively. "They understand that, at the end of the day, this is not art. This is a marketing tool ... And if our marketing tool isn't delivering the result we wanted -- then it's time to modify things. They felt very comfortable doing that."

The creative folks at Hill, Holliday, not surprisingly, put it slightly differently. "There are people at this agency who fought really hard to get this made, and who fought really hard to keep it on the air," says one agency staffer. "Now they're tying themselves in knots to be able to say privately that they achieved a triumph ... Of course there were compromises made. But it's still a triumph. We put a lesbian couple on the air in the Olympics adopting a baby."

Soon, however, the spot had to be recut a second time. The Joint Council on International Children's Service protested the ad, on the grounds that it might prompt officials in China, where gay and lesbian adoptions are not permitted, to crack down on single-parent adoptions. So Hill, Holliday went back to the editing room.

"We came up with what we consider to be a very elegant solution," an agency source tells me. "We very artfully ended up adding an announcement, making it clear that they were at the airport in Phnom Penh [Cambodia]. That way we don't adulterate the commercial. And we're sensitive to international adoption agencies in the process."

"So," I say lightly, "I guess Cambodians take a more laissez-faire attitude toward this kind of thing."

"Well," says the source, "we're hoping that takes care of that controversy. But we'll have to see. If issues arise [with the Cambodians], we'll put other solutions under consideration. One solution might include masking the face of the child."

Just as long as it's not a hockey mask.

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