{"id":2421,"date":"2008-05-31T08:49:28","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T08:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2008\/05\/31\/the-afa-boycott-of-ford-christ\/"},"modified":"2008-05-31T08:49:28","modified_gmt":"2008-05-31T08:49:28","slug":"the-afa-boycott-of-ford-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/31\/the-afa-boycott-of-ford-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"The AFA Boycott Of Ford: Christian Antigay Group Caves, Claims Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mississippi Based anti-gay hate group “American Family Association” was founded (under a different name) by the well known anti-Semite Reverend Donald Wildmon to battle pornographic television shows such as “Three’s Company” and “Dallas.” About two years ago, the AFA initiated a boycott against Ford Motor Company to attempt to force Ford to change certain practices. The following Crimes Against the Family were cited by the Christian based conservative Republican wingnut AFA:1. Diversity training of managers.2. Providing benefits to same sex partners.3. Advertising in gay media.4. Producing ads (mainly overseas) for some products (mainly Volvo and Jaguar) that invluded erotic symbols tied to homosexual activities5. Supporting gay organizations or activities with financial donations.An example of advertising in gay media includes a Volvo ad on th back of an issue of Advocate (a gay magazine) which included an article on “Gay Polygamy … how gay men handle multiple sexual partners.”I have not been able to find documentation of support Ford has given other than possibly indirectly through advertising to “gay organizations.”Earlier this year, Ford is said to have “caved” to the AFA’s absurd and anti-American and embarassingly moronic demands. However, this is not true. Ford appears to have agreed to a small number of changes in policy that seem either not related closely to AFA’s main ‘concerns,’ or have otherwise ignored AFA’s demands. The following is the list of changes that AFA claims ford will make (remember, this is from AFA, which as a Christian organization cannot be assumed to be honest in their public rhetoric, owing to the peculiar Christian ethic that it is OK to sin … lie, cheat, steal, etc. …. if you decide such activities would promote the Christian religion):1. Ford would not renew current promotions or create future incentives that give cash donations to homosexual organizations based on the purchase of a vehicle.2. Ford would not make corporate donations to homosexual organizations that, as part of their activities, engage in political or social campaigns to promote civil unions or same-sex marriage.3. Ford would stop giving cash and vehicle donations or endorsements to homosexual social activities such as Gay Pride parades.4. Ford would cease all advertising on homosexual Web sites and through homosexual media outlets (magazines, television, radio) in the U.S. with the exception of $100,000 to be used by Volvo. The Volvo ads would be the same ads used in the general media and not aimed at the homosexual community specifically.Please note the following:1. I cannot comment on the cash promotions and donations to homosexual organizations provision as I have not seen documentation of this activity and it is not clear what it means. I strongly suspect that this was something that either never happened or that occurred indirectly through the Foundation of Ford Inc, which is how most donations are passed on. By this measure, almost every single large company in the US is anti-gay because they give money to, say, The United Way, which in turn gives money to the Boy Scouts. And so on.2. One of the main sets of complaints the increasingly impotent AFA made was in regards to homo erotic ads (such as a Volvo ad showing an emergency break as a stand in for a gay male erection indicating great excitement over an upcoming homosexually oriented carnival like event in Australia). Well, according to this agreement, Volvo gets to keep doing what it wants with its ads.3. This set of statements i preceded by this sentence: “The original agreement contained four items” and is followed with this sentence: “A few minor issues remain, and we will continue to bring these to the attention of Ford. But basically Ford has met the terms of the agreement. We are therefore suspending the boycott.”Clearly, the AFA saw enough light to claim a victory even though there clearly would never be a victory. Some of Ford’s activities are required by law or best practices in HR, others are probably part of the standard corporate methodology of giving money way, and in this area, a group like the AFA will never be satisfied. Still other activities, such as advertising, are required to keep the business going and to satisfy stockholders. The only thing that seems to have actually changed is that Ford tried out some edgy over the top advertising that they knew might cause cause problems. It did . So they sheepishly back away from that an later on will surely try again.If FORD is Found On Road Dead, then what does AFA stand for?Sources<\/em>AFA<\/a>More AFA<\/a>Americablog<\/a>Wikipedia on AFA<\/a>Dispatches<\/a>CMI<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mississippi Based anti-gay hate group “American Family Association” was founded (under a different name) by the well known anti-Semite Reverend Donald Wildmon to battle pornographic television shows such as “Three’s Company” and “Dallas.” About two years ago, the AFA initiated a boycott against Ford Motor Company to attempt to force Ford to change certain … Continue reading The AFA Boycott Of Ford: Christian Antigay Group Caves, Claims Victory<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[230,33],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-D3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}