Last week, the misguided and poorly-named American Family Association announced that it was ending its nine-year boycott of Disney. A grand total of zero of the AFA’s demands had been met and the targeted company enjoyed a surge in profits after the boycott began (though the two were no doubt unrelated).
The fiasco prompted me to wonder which company would be lucky enough to draw the AFA’s ire next. Now we know: Ford Motor Company.
A week after they declared victory over Walt Disney Co., Christian activists have fired another missile in their long war against companies they think are destroying traditional American values.
The target this time is Ford Motor Co., which Christians should boycott as “the company which has done the most to affirm and promote the homosexual lifestyle,� the American Family Association says on a Web site it put up Monday, boycottford.com.
The AFA, the nonprofit group run by the Rev. Donald Wildmon, criticized Ford for donating money to gay-rights organizations — Ford promises to give up to $1,000 to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination for every Jaguar and Land Rover it sells to gays and lesbians. The group also complained that Ford sponsored gay pride celebrations, advertised in gay-oriented publications and was “redefining the definition of the family to include homosexual marriage,” Randy Sharp, the organization’s director of special projects, said Tuesday.
Keep in mind, now that the group has “claimed victory” — despite obvious failure — over Disney, the AFA isn’t just mad at Ford. As of this week, the group was also targeting Carl’s Jr. hamburger chain (the AFA doesn’t like its Paris Hilton TV ads), Kraft Foods (for its sponsorship of the 2006 Gay Games), Mary Kay Cosmetics and Old Navy stores (for advertising during “Desperate Housewives”) and NutriSystem Inc. (for a TV ad the AFA believes is salacious).
These boycotts follow similar efforts from recent years against, Crest toothpaste, Volkswagen, Tide detergent, Clorox bleach, Pampers, MTV, Abercrombie & Fitch, K-Mart, Burger King, American Airlines and S.C. Johnson & Son, makers of Windex, Ziploc, Pledge, Glade, and Edge. Late last year, the AFA also went after the movie “Shark Tale,” because the group believed the movie was designed to brainwash children into accepting gay rights.
In fact, the AFA is so filled with outrage, it sometimes targets and praises the same company — at the same time.
There is plenty to go after, and the AFA has aimed its guns at so many companies that even it has trouble keeping track, Sparks acknowledged in an interview. There are so many letter-writing campaigns, in fact, that sometimes the AFA finds itself working against itself.
For example, the organization in mid-May blitzed Wal-Mart for approving a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender affinity group for its employees, shortly after it lavishly praised Wal-Mart for matching donations to the Salvation Army over Christmas. In December, the AFA was praising Wal-Mart as a place where “Sam Walton’s legacy still remains in the minds and hearts of his company”; by April, it was urging Christians to consider taking their business elsewhere.
I don’t know what Ford has planned to deal with this boycott, but if company officials take the AFA’s nonsense seriously, they’re making a big mistake.