Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver floated a boycott of Starbucks today on Freedom’s Call, Staver’s daily news alert. Staver was addressing the controversy over Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s cancelled appearance at the Global Leadership Summit at Willow Creek church, which in the past had ties to the ex-gay group Exodus International.
Staver alleges that Schultz was “intimidated” by “homosexual activists” into withdrawing from the conference, falsely arguing that the petition to Schultz was about the church’s view on marriage while it was actually regarding Willow Creek’s connections to the ex-gay ministry. In fact, marriage is nowhere mentioned in the petition. Staver also claimed that “Schultz and Starbucks have routinely been pro-abortion in their policies and actions” and that Schultz is beholden to “his homosexual constituency.”
“Since Starbucks is so pro-homosexual,” Staver said, “probably the people that buy Starbucks ought to consider patronizing another place”:
Liberty Counsel previously endorsed a boycott against McDonalds for allegedly working with “militant homosexual activists” and pressure campaigns against schools that permit students to participate in the “Day of Silence,” which protests anti-gay bullying.
Staver’s weighing of a Starbucks boycott is especially ironic because his deputy at Liberty Counsel, Matt Barber, accused gay rights advocates of “economic terrorism” for protesting companies that were part of the CGBG, a commercial group that allowed customers to grant proceeds to the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Liberty Counsel.
But for Religious Right groups, pressure campaigns are only tolerated when they are the ones organizing them.
