Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Big Money vs. fundamentalist righwing family groups

Several stories have come to the forefront in the past week regarding rightwing conservative groups such as Focus on the Family and the American Family Association and their battle with large corporations over gay rights issues.
Last week Focus on the Family announced that it withdrew its fund's from Wells Fargo because of it's donation matching to GLAAD, a GLBT-rights organization. Focus claims the move was to protest the bank's "ongoing efforts to advance the radical homosexual agenda." (what BUNK that is!)

Moreover, reports claim that Ford Motor Co. pulled ads from homosexual-targeted publications at the urging of the American Family Association. The AFA launched a boycott of Ford products in May due to it's supposed marketing towards homosexual consumers. Another scary victory for the AFA.

In my opinion, these right wing fundamentalist groups (who represent a very small percentage of the population) are gaining all too much momentum. They are starting to gather an unsettling amount of control over these corporations and are even using the media to promote thier agenda. Kudos to Wells Fargo, however, for matching funds to GLAAD. I can only hope that Wells Fargo maintains it's support of GLBT organizations in the face of Focus's threats. Ford has also been known (at least up until now...???) for it's emphasis on equal treatment and benefits for it's GLBT employees.

While I'd hope that our society would make progress with human rights as we've entered the new century, it seems we are backtracking. For every AMA and Focus on the Family-type organization, we need 10 of the PFLAG, GLAAD, and HRC's to continue to stand up and fight against the rights-restricting agendas of these so called "family-focused" organizations.

How exactly are these organizations supporting families if they are directly fighting against the stability of almost 600,000 families in America?

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