quote:Dear family and friends, I don't get on a rant too often, but lately it seems to me that we're headed towards a form of religious McCarthyism: 'Are you now, or have you ever been associated with a gay person'. It's time to speak up while there's time to do so. I consider myself very religious, but I don't assume that somehow allows me to take my relationship with God and use it as a way to hurt others. A small group of people are high jacking the meaning of 'religious' in this country, as if everyone who believes in a God is a single, monolithic force. Ford was actually boycotted recently because they contributed to AIDs research.
"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities." (John E. E. Dalberg, Lord Acton, 1834-1902, British historian, The History of Freedom and Other Essays, 1907. From Henry O. Dormann, compiler, The Speaker's Book of Quotations, New York: Ballantine Books, 1987, p. 43.)
Spurred on by a biblical injunction evangelicals call "The Great Commission," and emboldened by George W. Bush's re-election, which is perceived as a "mandate from God," the Christian right has launched a series of boycotts and pressure campaigns aimed at corporate America -- and at its sponsorship of entertainment, programs and activities they don't like.
And it's working. Just three weeks ago, the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA) announced it was ending its boycott of corporate giant Procter & Gamble -- maker of household staples like Tide and Crest -- for being pro-gay. Why? Because the AFA's boycott (which the organization says enlisted 400,000 families) had succeeded in getting P&G to pull its millions of dollars in advertising from TV shows like "Will & Grace" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
P&G also ended its advertising in gay magazines and on gay Web sites. And a P&G executive who had been given a leave of absence to work on a successful Cincinnati, Ohio, referendum that repealed a ban on any measures protecting gays from discrimination was shown the door.
*snip*
And it's not just programs on the broadcast networks and their local affiliates that are feeling the heat from the Christian right. When the AFA targeted Comedy Central's "South Park," the popular cartoon satire saw ads on the show pulled by Foot Locker, Geico, Finish Line and Best Buy.
Nissan, Goodyear and Castrol stopped running ads on "The Shield" after AFA complaints. Sonic Drive-In pulled its ad support from "The Shield" after a single email request from AFA's Rev. Wildmon. S.C. Johnson and Hasbro ordered their ads taken off "He's a Lady" when it got the AFA treatment. And the list goes on ..... Call it a new, 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not advertise" if the religious primitives smell sin.
Just two weeks ago, the AFA undertook a new letter-writing campaign aimed at Kraft Foods (makers of Oreo cookies, Maxwell House coffee, Ritz Crackers and the like) for supporting the "radical homosexual agenda."
*snip*
But, following the AFA's lead, another conservative Christian group -- the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) -- has asked its members to take on Kraft and five other Illinois companies that are sponsoring what it calls the "Homosexuality Games." Proclaimed the IFI: "By allowing their corporate logos to be used to promote the 'Gay Games,' Kraft, Harris Bank and other sponsoring companies are celebrating wrong and destructive behaviors, and showing their disdain for the majority of Americans who favor traditional morality and marriage."
Here's a nice touch: The IFI's Web site features a statue of Abraham Lincoln, who some historians now credibly say was gay or bisexual. Will Kraft stand up to the pressure? The company's answer to this protest campaign is, for the moment, yes -- but for how long?
All across the country, the Christian right and its allies in the culture wars are mobilizing -- sometimes spurred on from the top by the AFA, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and similar national groups, but with increasing frequency local pressure campaigns and boycott threats are self-starters. They target everything from local broadcast outlets and local cable operators to libraries, bookstores, playhouses, cinemas and magazine outlets.
"The Christian right is incredibly mobilized," says Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, a 30-year-old alliance of 50 nonprofit groups. Bertin says, "There's been an explosion of local book and arts censorship -- a lot of activity by an emboldened grassroots, who think they won the last election on moral grounds. They barely need to threaten a boycott to get those they target to back down -- hey, nobody had to threaten to boycott PBS to get them to back off Postcards From Buster." Bertin affirms that "This new threat from below as well as above has already achieved a widespread chill" on creative and entertainment arts throughout the country.
*snip* Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, calls the new offensive a drive toward "theocratic oligopoly. The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country," adding that "e-mails to the FCC are more worrisome to me than boycotts" in terms of their chilling effect.
Even The New York Times is feeling the chill. At the beginning of May, an internal committee of 19 Times editors and reporters, who'd been asked how to improve the paper's "credibility" with a wider swath of America, came up with a key recommendation: Deliberalize the paper's news columns, especially through more coverage on religion from a sympathetic point of view.
*snip*
There's one big problem: Nobody at the national level is tracking these censorship and pressure campaigns in a systematic way, to quantify them or assess their impact, so that strategies to defeat them can be developed.
"People for the American Way used to track this stuff, but they stopped doing so systematically in 1996. We at Political Research Associates would love to do it," says Berlet, "but we don't have the resources. Groups like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute or Americans United for Separation of Church and State could easily do this sort of work. But none of us has the money to do it, because nobody wants to give it. There used to be three major journalists writing about this stuff -- Sara Diamond, Russ Belant and Fred Clarkson. But none of them could make a living doing it, and they've all dropped out of the game."
Unless Hollywood, and the entertainment and broadcast industries, all want to live through an epoch of increasing content blackmail and blacklists, the wealthy folks who make a lot of money from those industries better wake up and start funding intensive and systematic research on the Christian right and its censorship crusades against sexual subversion and sin in the creative arts -- or soon it will be too late, and the "theocratic oligopoly" of which Martin Kaplan speaks will be so firmly established it cannot be dislodged.
posted
Telp, since the entire text is available online, could you maybe excerpt some stuff here and (as you already have done) provide the link to the whole article please, rather than including the entire copyrighted text here? Thanks.
posted
I think that limiting someone's right to boycott would be more damaging to civil rights than allowing large groups of people to influence where companies advertize.
I see nothing wrong or hateful about refusing to support businesses that promote entertainment that you find in poor taste.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
There's certainly nothing legally wrong with it, and both sides push the first amendment as hard as they can to get their point across. Still, it doesn't actually do anything positive for the country, as far as I can tell. Unless you enjoy nationwide cultural schisms and bitter arguments ...
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posted
It's not the boycotting, it's the impressing on major parts of life, as commercial companies are in America, the belief you hold.
Also (and I'm not being inflammatory, just stating), as someone who lives in a largely gay-friendly environment, the idea that what, to me, is an extremely radical idea, should have such power is very, very worrying.
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There's plenty of Christian Republicans that are content to let others live their own life. Only the RadCons try to impose their way of life on others.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I hate this. America is only a free country if people are allowed to do what they want. People like this go against everything america stands for. This is the same kind of control the Islamic radicals are fighting for in the Middle East. Remind me how these so much better'n the folks over in the Mid East?
Well... I suppose they haven't used violence to get their point across... yet.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
"America is only a free country if people are allowed to do what they want."
Well, no. Frankly, organized boycotts are one of the best ways to move an agenda without involving the government. The boycott is, in my opinion, a powerful expression of freedom and democracy.
Sure, it's regrettable that religious conservatives are apparently dedicated and numerous enough to pull off these boycotts successfully, but that doesn't mean they're oppressing anyone. It just means they're more passionate than you are.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
That was really well said Tom! I was going to say pretty much the same thing, but after I read yours I realized you said it better than I was going to Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I don't oppose the fact that they're boycotting; it just makes me sad that there are so many people in the US who can't even manage a "live and let live" type of attitude. It really does seem similar to the type of hate black people faced fifty odd years ago.
When I lived in Germany, I always told people I was from Kalifornian, instead of saying "Amerika." Gave people a better understanding of my political and cultural background. Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:it just makes me sad that there are so many people in the US who can't even manage a "live and let live" type of attitude
Many people on both sides of the fence believe that this sort of attitude is shallow and selfish, believe it or not. They don't consider it a virtue.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Of course not - how dare we passively encourage these poor damned souls to continue wallowing in sin and depravity?
If we were good Christian folk, we'd do all we could to save their immortal souls from the fires of Damnation and Brimstone.
I bet we could toss KarlEd into a lake and he'd sink, proving he's not gay. Or is that a witch?
It doesn't matter - we're just going to burn him at the stake afterwards to ensure he doesn't fail in his path to Eternal Salvation. Or we burn him at the stake to send the damned soul straight down to the Devil's waiting embrace. And the wet look is so last year anyway.
We're doing him a favor, honest. Cookies and punch will be served afterwards.
posted
Look guys, as Tom and Annie point out, the alternative to this is to place limits on political speech... and I KNOW no one here wants that, right?
And thank you Trevor, and others, for your extremely tolerant, well thought out, and totally justifiable comments about religious people in America.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I would like to think my depressingly accurate commentary does not accurately portray the majority of people professing to be religious in America.
If it were, I would have been staked a long, long time ago.
But I will point out that there are people who do subscribe to that line of thought, up to and including the notion that AIDs is divine judgement upon homosexuals.
posted
Beyond mere disagreement with their position and/or attitude, I really don't have a problem with the groups mentioned in the article, or their actions. What they are doing is not only legal, it is in fact a good way of promoting your philosophy or beliefs in a pluralistic society. It is certainly much better than having the equivalent mandates handed down by the government.
Actions like this certainly do not "go against everything america stands for." Quite the opposite. Making such a claim is like crying "censorship" when no government action has been taken, merely private expression of disapprobation.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote: Actions like this certainly do not "go against everything america stands for." Quite the opposite. Making such a claim is like crying "censorship" when no government action has been taken, merely private expression of disapprobation.
That deserves to be quoted again.
There is nothing un-American about the actions taken, it is in fact a celebration of the freedom we do enjoy in this country.
I would not be opposed if it were turned around and say, gay advocates were encouraging boycotts of sponsors of Christian television shows. To me, they also would be excercising their rights to free expression.
Nothing un-American about anything being done here and I definitely would oppose any legislation trying to limit a group calling for boycotts.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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