A campaign spearheaded by LGBT rights and women’s rights groups Change.org and AllOut.org, encouraging companies to drop their ties to the Charity Give Back Group (formerly the Christian Values Network), unsurprisingly has the Religious Right up in arms. The CGBG “operates a sort of online mall, donating a portion of each purchase to religious nonprofits,” Michelle Goldberg explains. “Among them are conservative organizations like Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, Promise Keepers, and a number of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.”
The campaign to get businesses to opt out of CGBG’s program has been very successful, with over 200 companies such as Delta, Apple and Macy’s dropping out of the program so far.
Focus on the Family is now encouraging its members to write to the companies that have ended their ties with CGBG. And today, the Family Research Council launched the “Resist Discrimination” campaign, demanding companies “resist pressure to discriminate against customers with a traditional, biblical view of marriage” with a warning that they “should beware of online activists who spread misinformation to pressure retailers to discriminate against customers and charities with Judeo-Christian moral views, including marriage as the union of a man and a woman.” Of course, Focus on the Family and the FRC would never support similar pressure campaigns…right?
As a matter of the fact, FRC was part of a campaign last year that threatened to boycott Comedy Central if the channel did not drop a planned comedy show about Jesus Christ, and in 2008 endorsed a five month boycott of McDonalds and Wal-Mart because of the companies’ ties to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Focus on the Family also closed its Wells Fargo accounts in 2005 to protest the bank’s donation to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. In 2006, Focus on the Family founder and then-president James Dobson urged members to boycott Proctor & Gamble because of its support for a gay-rights initiative. “For Procter & Gamble to align itself with radical groups committed to redefining marriage in our country is an affront to its customers,” Dobson said.
The CGBG was founded by Stephen Baldwin (Alec Baldwin’s brother) and Michael Lohan (Lindsay Lohan’s father), with Mike Huckabee acting as its spokesman. Now, the CGBG is advised by Baldwin and Kevin McCullough, who run XtreMEDIA. McCullough recently acted as a spokesperson for CGBG’s response to the AllOut! and Change.org campaign, saying the groups were disseminating a “dishonest message.” While FRC and Focus’s active opposition to LGBT and women’s rights is well documented, McCullough is a lesser known activist. He has a radio show on the Christian channel Family NET and stands in for American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer when the latter is on vacation from his show on American Family Radio.
While McCullough claims that the CGBG shouldn’t be attacked over its ties to the FRC and Focus, McCullough’s own anti-gay activism speaks for itself.
In 2006, McCullough argued that gay people “hate God” and want to “destroy” marriage: “Radical homosexual activists hate marriage because fundamentally they hate God, and the guilt of both drives them to extremes.” “Despite all that their angry-mob front groups argue in front of television cameras to the contrary, radical homosexual activists despise the institution, and more importantly the sanctity, of marriage. That is the fundamental reason why they are seeking to destroy the institution,” he wrote. “Radical homosexual activists hate biblical marriage, because to achieve its benefits and blessings they must first conform to God's plan for sexuality, and the sinful nature in man is not willing to make such submission and conformity happen.”
After former Vice President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter and her partner had a child, McCollough said they were withholding a father “purposefully, simply to stroke one's own desire to have a child - sort of like a new handbag, or pair of shoe.”
In another anti-gay column, McCullough wrote that “homosexuality is damaging to society” because “the ‘gay’ lifestyle does nothing to promote monogamous healthy relationships. Why? Because there is little, if anything, healthy about nihilism, narcissism and compulsive sexual addiction. Yet the community where these traits are not only seen, but also encouraged, is again among individuals wrapped up in the ‘gay life.’”
McCullough has also accused President Obama of working for an “inhumane, sick, and sinister evil” agenda and called him “a man who represents the views of Satan at worst or progressive anti-God liberals at best” because of the president’s support of “the radical homosexual activist lobby.”
To top it all off, McCullough endorsed the FRC’s pressure campaign against Wal-Mart because of the company’s support for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, in a column where he likened homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality. He called on people to distribute the FRC’s anti-Wal-Mart flyer and to demand Wal-Mart stop being “entangled with ugly radical, sexual activism”:
On nearly every occasion I've visited a Wal-Mart, I've nearly always seen entire families shopping together – of every racial and ethnic background you could imagine. Newer than Sears, less expensive than Target, much more hip than K-Mart, there quite possibly couldn't be a more family-friendly vendor in all of America.
Until this week ...
Wal-Mart stores have now signed on to an agreement with the "National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce."
Leaving me to ask the question: WHY?
…
So, why is Wal-Mart now spending resources in time, attention and money to promote same-gender sexual behavior?
Why will a Wal-Mart vice president now sit on the NGLCC task force?
Why will Wal-Mart spend monetary resources to help fund conferences that promote same-gender sexual behavior? Would they do the same for adulterers? Pedophiles? Men who like sheep?
Why will Wal-Mart go out of its way to purchase products from businesses that profit from same-gender sexual behavior?
And why did they have to change their policy on the extension of benefits for married employees to now include same-sex domestic partners? Will they also extend the benefits to opposite-sex domestic partners? Why are they discriminating against heterosexuals?
Admittedly, I haven't been in a Wal-Mart in about three years. New York City seems to have a chip on its shoulder about them and won't seem to let them come within arm's reach of Manhattan – which brings about Wal-Mart's newest challenge.
In turning their back on the Red State shopper who disapproves of these changes, Wal-Mart has made a terrible business decision.
I know it wasn't their idea. But in not fighting it, by succumbing to the threats of the community that likes to identify itself based on what type of sex they have in the bedroom, Wal-Mart has taken a turn in an incredibly stupid direction.
This was never about Wal-Mart really needing to become more tolerant – they didn't. But a handful of hateful activists put a bull's-eye on the retailer that scared it.
Wal-Mart should be more afraid of losing its core buyer than catering to the extremists among us.
So let's remind them.
Print out this flyer, print out dozens. Hand them out at church, to your neighbors and to the customer service desk of your local Wal-Mart. Let them know – in all kindness – that you don't see any reason why the proud tradition of Sam Walton – a truly great American – should needlessly be entangled with ugly radical, sexual activism.
Look, we all lose our way sometimes, and that's when it's important for our friends to step up, look us in the eye and tell us the truth – even if it hurts.
And for America, this one does.
