The religious right has taken Ghandi's non-violent protest into heretical territory while Martin Luther King used boycotting as a method of non-violent protest based on Ghandi's premise of satyagraha. Behind the establishment of non-violence were years, decades, centuries of injustices that needed to be erased. At one time or another these injustices had the explicit backing of the christian churches.
In hindsight the churches apologized for their misunderstanding, misinterpretation of scripture, and lack of understanding and compassion for things such as slavery, the Inquisition, Galileo, colonialism, and complicity by Jews in Christ's death, for example.
Boycotts work in the face of injustice sometimes. The threat is usually more powerful than the actual boycott since they seldom get beyond threats. The almighty dollar is the driving force behind politics in this country. The groups that shout the loudest or withhold their money usually get what they want - at other's cost.
The christian right has been making themselves into the victims for the last several years - actually centuries since the Magna Carta - and using bigotry of their beliefs as the reason for their victimization. However, they use the same tactics against other groups in the name of Christ.
The boycott of Proctor & Gamble and the new threatened boycotts of Kraft and Microsoft because of their support for simple rights of LGBT's smack of hypocrisy and heresy of christian values of love, peace, forgiveness, acceptance, etc. They pretend to be protecting the lives of innocents.
The latest is a new threat from a group led by Ken Hutcherson and backed by the American Family Association and Focus on the Family against Microsoft's "change of heart" on the LGBT legislation in Washingto state. Randy Sharp, the AFA's director of special projects, told The Sunday Telegraph: "What a company does in its work place is its own business. But if they start supporting a radical homosexual agenda beyond their doors, that is a different matter."
What is "radical" about the alleged homosexual "agenda?" First of all, I have never seen the "agenda." I have seen, time after time, the religious rights "agenda." It is filled with venomous epithets, some couched some outright, against the rights that ALL Americans are guaranteed by the Constitution. They want to change the Constitution to reflect their theism when the writers of the Constitution specifically declared that the separation of church and state was one of the most important things behind its construction because of the inhibitions forced on them by the British monarchy. They wanted no part of further discrimination based on any reason.
And what exactly is Microsoft supporting "beyond their doors?" Are they saying that only people who support LGBT rights can buy Windows, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Entourage, etc.? Are they telling christian employees that they have to sleep with members of the same sex in order to work for them? Is Microsoft saying that it will NOT do business with other companies that do not support LGBT rights?
Now they are starting a boycott against Kraft because it is supporting the Gay Games to be held in Chicago in 2006. Do they want the entire country to go through "Cheez Whiz" withdrawal? Not a pretty picture! They argue that by supporting the Gay Games, Kraft is supporting the homosexual agenda and foisting upon unsuspecting families and youth that being gay is one of Kraft's primary goals. I can assure them that there is nothing gay about macaroni and cheese...
it cannot make anyone gay any more than it can make them regular in their bm's...
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