Another swing of the
pocketbook
Christian activist
group goes after Ford Motor Co.
By Alex Johnson,
MSNBC from the Web, May 31, 2005
A week after they declared victory
over Walt Disney Co., Christian activists have fired another missile in their
long war against companies they think are destroying traditional American
values.
The target this time is Ford Motor Co., which Christians should boycott as “the
company which has done the most to affirm and promote the homosexual lifestyle,”
the American Family Association says on a Web site it put up Monday,
boycottford.com.
The AFA, the nonprofit group run by the Rev. Donald Wildmon, criticized Ford for
donating money to gay-rights organizations (Ford promises to give up to $1,000
to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination for every Jaguar and Land
Rover it sells to gays and lesbians), sponsoring gay pride celebrations,
advertising in gay-oriented publications and “redefining the definition of the
family to include homosexual marriage,” Randy Sharp, the organization’s director
of special projects, said in an interview Tuesday.
Officials at Ford did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Thousands respond to call for action
The quantifiable impact of a boycott based on Christian principles is all but
impossible to assess, but for the AFA, which has gone after scores of giant
corporations for almost 30 years, they are an article of faith. By Tuesday
afternoon, more then 54,000 people had signed the AFA’s online pledge to boycott
Ford, Sharp said.
The organization usually starts with a letter-writing campaign, urging its
members to contact executives, local franchisers and advertisers to express
unhappiness with a company’s behavior. In what it considers intractable
circumstances, the AFA will escalate to a formal boycott.
The campaigns are the AFA’s most visible activity by far. Through its
main Web site and two
affiliated sites, One
Million Dads and
One Million Moms, it can have a score of boycotts and letter-writing drives
in play at one time.
The fight against Ford is just one of many it has going: As of Tuesday, it
was calling for action against the Carl’s Jr. hamburger chain (to protest its
racy new ad featuring Paris Hilton), Kraft Foods (for its sponsorship of the
2006 Gay Games), Mary Kay Cosmetics and Old Navy stores (for advertising on
ABC’s prime-time soap opera “Desperate Housewives”) and NutriSystem Inc., the
weight-loss company (for airing its own salacious TV ad).
Most recently, the AFA ended a nine-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co., which
it launched because of what it felt was the company’s “attitude, arrogance and
embrace of the homosexual lifestyle.”
The AFA said it was moving on because “we have made our point.” Disney
said it never changed any of its policies, but Sharp pointed to an executive
shuffle and the sale of Disney’s Miramax studio, which seemed to specialize in
films designed to get Wildmon’s goat, notably “Kids,” “Priest” and “Dogma.”
‘Gay agenda,’ racy ads push hot buttons
The reasons for each boycott vary in the details, but the companies’ alleged
zeal to push the “homosexual agenda” is a common theme, side by side with their
sponsorships of television programs the AFA finds morally unacceptable.
There is plenty to go after, and the AFA has aimed its guns at so many companies
that even it has trouble keeping track, Sparks acknowledged in an interview.
There are so many letter-writing campaigns, in fact, that sometimes the AFA
finds itself working against itself.
For example, the organization in mid-May blitzed Wal-Mart for approving a gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender affinity group for its employees, shortly
after it lavishly praised Wal-Mart for matching donations to the Salvation Army
over Christmas. In December, the AFA was praising Wal-Mart as a place
where “Sam Walton’s legacy still remains in the minds and hearts of his
company”; by April, it was urging Christians to consider taking their business
elsewhere.
Other Christian organizations have tried similar tactics; most recently, a
minister in suburban Seattle claimed credit for a decision by Microsoft Corp. to
withdraw its support for a bill that would have extended Washington state’s
anti-discrimination laws to gays and lesbians, a claim Microsoft rejected.
(MSNBC is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC.)
But there is no other organization quite like the AFA, which in the past has
taken on Crest toothpaste, Volkswagen, Tide detergent, Clorox bleach, Pampers,
MTV, Abercrombie & Fitch, K-Mart, Burger King, American Airlines and S.C.
Johnson & Son, makers of Windex, Ziploc, Pledge, Glade and Edge.
The current campaign against NutriSystem reveals how much the AFA relishes the
battle. The company’s sin is to have aired a television ad that the AFA
found “offensive and tasteless,” and to whet its followers’ appetite for battle,
the AFA spares no detail in describing just how offensive and tasteless the ad
is:
“A woman in black panties, bra, and high heels, is pushing a shopping cart
through a supermarket aisle,” the AFA says in an Action Alert on its Web site.
“A man stocking items seems to be lusting after her, as she pauses in front of
him (shown from side angle). They zoom in on her stomach as the stocker
glances up and down at her torso with a lustful smile. The panties are
very low cut, [and] as she walks away it is in slow motion.”
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