Ford caves in to fundie "crash test dummies"

Like a cheap subcompact in one of those front-end crash tests, Ford Motor Company has caved in to the radical religious reich.

According to an article on Advocate.com:

The antigay American Family Association claimed a cultural victory on Thursday and called off its threatened boycott of Ford Motor Co. On Friday, Ford spokesman Mike Moran confirmed to Advocate.com that the company will stop advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in gay publications but insisted it was strictly a business decision.

The Dearborn, Mich., automaker came under fire from the AFA in May for its longtime efforts to increase LGBT workplace diversity and support gay rights causes. Ford has long been a regular advertiser within gay media, including The Advocate, and has donated significant sums to LGBT causes and nonprofit groups such as the Human Rights Campaign.

Threatened with a boycott by the Mississippi-based AFA, Ford and some of its dealers agreed to negotiate, and the AFA announced in June that it would hold off on its planned action. On Thursday, AFA announced the boycott would be canceled altogether.

"They've heard our concerns; they are acting on our concerns. We are pleased with where we are," said Donald Wildmon, AFA’s chairman, in a statement. "Obviously there are still some small matters of difference, as people will always have, but generally speaking, we are pleased with the results—and therefore the boycott that had been suspended [is] now officially ended."

While the boycott by the inbred idiots of AFA may be officially ended, Ford needs to hear that a new boycott by LGBT consumers is just beginning.

In the past Ford has been supportive of LGBT issues and has helped to fund some LGBT programs across the country. But by caving in to the ravings of the fanatical Donald Wildmon and his followers who have made a name for themselves threatening boycotts of businesses they deem to "friendly" to that big bugaboo "the homo-seck-shul agenda," Ford risks making a whole new set of enemies.

Ford needs to hear from us and know that we will take all that supposed "disposable income" we have and shop elsewhere the next time we thinking about a new car.

Ford also needs to know that in siding with AFA, they are jumping in bed with a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center (which tracks such groups as the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations) listed as a hate group in it's spring 2005 magazine, Intelligence Report.

Here's what SPLC had to say about Wildmon and AFA:

Best known for leading boycotts of advertisers who support "indecency" in the mass media (including the supposedly cocaine-snorting Mighty Mouse), the Rev. Donald Wildmon, a former Methodist minister, has led a series of religious-right groups since 1976. ...

In one October 2004 article, the AFA Journal suggests that gay influences are leading to a "grotesque culture" that will include "quick encounters in the middle school boys' restroom." In its 1994 booklet Homosexuality in America, the AFA claims "[p]rominent homosexual leaders and publications have voiced support for pedophilia, incest, sadomasochism, and even bestiality."

AFA's direct-mail appeals are particularly shrill. "For the sake of our children and society, we must OPPOSE the spread of homosexual activity! Just as we must oppose murder, stealing, and adultery!" says one such recent fundraising letter. "Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, the only way for them to 'breed' is to RECRUIT! And who are their targets for recruitment? Children!"

AFA has 21 state directors, including California's Scott Lively, co-author of The Pink Swastika, a book that claims "homosexuals are the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities" (see also Making Myths).

In late 2004, the AFA called for a boycott of Proctor & Gamble, calling it "one of the largest promoters of the homosexual agenda," partly because it advertises on TV shows "Will and Grace" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." By late January 2005, AFA claimed more than 380,000 people had signed its boycott petition.

If Ford is willing to jump into bed with these bigoted knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, then it doesn't have much respect for the LGBT community.

For anyone interested in letting Ford know how you feel, the company's phone number, address and e-mail is listed on its web site.