Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality joined Janet Mefferd yesterday to attack gay rights advocates over calls to boycott Chick-fil-A because of the company’s anti-gay advocacy, including their donations to anti-gay organizations, as an attack on private enterprise:
Of course, much like activists from the National Organization for Marriage, Liberty Counsel and the American Family Association, after denouncing boycotts as a grave wrong…they simultaneously called for boycotts of companies that support gay rights, such as General Mills, Chili’s and Target. According to LaBarbera and Mefferd, it is inappropriate for companies to back gay rights efforts or groups because they will be offending customers when they should be remaining neutral in the “culture war.” However, if a company like Chick-fil-A opposes gay rights, then it is an admirable decision worthy of support and any criticism of their activism is an assault on freedom.
LaBarbera: I think our next step is going to a place like General Mills and saying why are you doing this? You can’t even maintain a neutrality? Can’t you at least be neutral? Not give to the homosexual activists? If you’re not going to give to Americans for Truth, OK that’s fine, but don’t give to the homosexual lobby because the mass, silent majority of Americans does not support radically redefining marriage to include two men or two women, they just don’t support that.
Mefferd: I agree, one of the other companies that has really started supporting it too is Target. I was made enough, I don’t go out and tell people what to do, but I was mad enough personally as a mother when this has been such a family-oriented company over the years, they had Amy Grant doing their publicity years ago, now they are selling same-sex wedding cards, they had two men on an ad for a wedding registry. I finally just said, you know what enough is enough, enough is enough, I’m not shopping here anymore, and I emailed them and I said I’m not shopping here anymore and I spend a lot of money at Target, I’ve just had enough.
LaBarbera: I’m with you on boycotts. We can’t boycott everybody. At Americans For Truth our policy is we pick specific boycotts, for example we’re boycotting Chili’s restaurants and Maggiano’s. They’re owned by a company, Brinker International, that supports the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force which is one of the most extreme and radical homosexual organizations in the world. So we are targeting certain corporations. The message here is we need to defend Godly values, if you’re in a culture war and only one side is doing all the fighting, spending all the money, bieng aggressive, while the other side is ambiguous about whether they should be in this battle at all, guess who is going to win? There is nothing Christian or noble about disengaging from the culture war, that’s for sure.
