On Monday, Pam Spaulding linked something on her Facebook page which has stayed in my mind, largely because it shows the divide between the busybody left and the busybody right on gay issues — and makes it easier for me to show just exactly what freedom means.
Get Equal Now has sent the American Family Association a cease and desist letter after the anti-gay, right-wing organization called for a boycott of Home Depot.
Last week, AFA called for a boycott of the home improvement retailer because it sponsored several gay Pride events this year and offers domestic partner benefits to its employees.
So, here we have a private enterprise, Home Depot, making private business decisions, decisions which, to me at least, seem sound. Now, the American Family Association (AFA) happens not to like those decisions, so they’re launching a boycott — which is their prerogative in a free society. Personally, I don’t see how granting domestic partner benefits can diminish the quality of home improvement goods or services. And isn’t that the reason most people go to Home Depot?
Given the success of AFA’s past boycotts, I wouldn’t worry too much about their current move. I mean, you know, now that Disney has long since stopped offering domestic partner benefits to its employees. Oh, wait a minute, that’s right, Disney never caved.
And now we’ve got a left-wing organization trying to prevent a right-wing one from exercising its freedom to protest a private enterprise which has adopted a policy that it just doesn’t like. Why can’t they just leave well enough alone? (I might say the same thing to the AFA.)
Given the AFA’s track record, this boycott’s going to fail. So, I urge Get Equal Now to take Napoleon’s words to heart, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
How do you enforce a cease and desist order on a boycott? “You, yes you! Buy your stuff at Home Depot or we’ll arrest you!”
Mark it down, folks.
I agree with Dan.
😉
How incredibly stupid and I’m not sure which ticks me off more: their asinine stunt resulting in intimidation of civil rights BY GET EQUAL, or my being forced to defend a group I despise in order to protect those rights. AFA has every right to patron or boycott Home Depot and any other business, just like all of us do.
Just another example of two organizations using their free speech rights here. Now I’m going to use my free speech and say that both of these groups’ actions are asinine.
Ditto that, Pat.
This is a ridiculously disingenuous post. The cease and desist order had nothing to do with making anyone shop at Home Depot, it had to do with “facts” about gays used in printed materials about the boycott. Namely, the same old proven lies about gays that all of these orgs push. Suing them for printing lies about gay people is their new approach, which it is fine to be critical of, but to say the C&D was to stop the boycott is frankly, a lie.
The cease and desist order had nothing to do with making anyone shop at Home Depot, it had to do with “facts” about gays used in printed materials about the boycott.
Such as?
The fact that gay and lesbian psychiatrists endorsed and supported by the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists openly state that dressing children as sexual slaves and taking them to sex fairs to “show off” in front of naked and masturbating adults for those adults’ pleasure is an “educational experience” and that anyone who opposes it is “close-minded”?
The fact that the gay and lesbian community supported NAMBLA and passed numerous resolutions demanding the elimination of age-of-consent laws?
The fact that gay people have a rate of HIV and syphilis infection more than forty times that of straight people?
I mean, really, I’d LOVE to see “Get Equal Now” sue the CDC. Or perhaps they could actually, you know, go after gay and lesbian psychiatrists and their associations who promote the value of children as sex fetish objects, or maybe condemn the gay and lesbian organizations who held NAMBLA as a cherished member for decades.
Duper @ 7:
I’d have to say that’s wrong, Duper.
Get Equal’s cease-and-desist letter says nothing about “lies”; what it does mention is “the verbal abuse of our community on radio, television and in print” of homosexuals, which could mean anything said about them that Get Equal doesn’t like.
The letter’s only example of the AFA’s “intimidating, manipulative and high-pressure tactics” Get Equal opposes is the AFA’s boycott of Ford. The letter can only be fairly read to mean that Get Equal objects to the AFA’s members exercising their right to freedom of speech and association by calling for a boycott of which Get Equal disapproves.
Hey guys, let me just say that you guys are kick azz!! I’m a straight guy who grew up in a typical southern baptist home that listened to all that gay bashing AFA, Focus on the Family garbage growing up. Then I got out on my own and realized that homosexuals are just normal folks who have radicals in their ranks just like southern baptists do, but the majority of you guys are just normal run of the mill dudes! Its awesome to see that you guys can see through the BS of the AFA and not jumping on the bandwagon of shutting down free speech. Hang in there guys, there are some of us straight christian guys who have your back!