AlterNet: The New Blacklist

[unhappycamper]

The New Blacklist
By Doug Ireland, LA Weekly. Posted June 13, 2005.

The Christian right has launched a series of boycotts and pressure campaigns aimed at corporate America -- and at its sponsorship of entertainment, programs and activities they don't like.

Spurred on by a biblical injunction evangelicals call "The Great Commission," and emboldened by George W. Bush's re-election, which is perceived as a "mandate from God," the Christian right has launched a series of boycotts and pressure campaigns aimed at corporate America -- and at its sponsorship of entertainment, programs and activities they don't like.

And it's working. Just three weeks ago, the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA) announced it was ending its boycott of corporate giant Procter & Gamble -- maker of household staples like Tide and Crest -- for being pro-gay. Why? Because the AFA's boycott (which the organization says enlisted 400,000 families) had succeeded in getting P&G to pull its millions of dollars in advertising from TV shows like "Will & Grace" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

P&G also ended its advertising in gay magazines and on gay Web sites. And a P&G executive who had been given a leave of absence to work on a successful Cincinnati, Ohio, referendum that repealed a ban on any measures protecting gays from discrimination was shown the door.

MORE
http://www.alternet.org/story/22206/

[ck4829]

1. What can we do to strike back?

This is getting pretty serious.

And I know RW'ers who say that the 'christian' Right is just a bunch of Conservative 'christians' who simply want their voice heard...

YEAH RIGHT!

The 'christian' Right needs to be stopped, they are doing this for bigotry, and they are evil as far as I concerned. They are no better than terrorists because we all know what they truly want and they want to control America as though it is THEIR Country.

Shame on you GOP, for letting them control you. But, we should have stopped them when they were weak, so we deserve some of the blame too, I guess.

As you all know I am a Muslim, what they 'christian' Right is doing is not new. I have seen it in the Theocracy of Iran, the Theocracy of the Taliban, and in other places as well. Mixing Fascism and Religion always results in evil, no matter what the religion is.

They need to be stopped before it is too late.

[unhappycamper]

2. You can buy blue. Here's a link to their web site:

http://www.buyblue.org/

[ck4829]

3. Thank you

I am also thinking of a group called 'The Green Wing' which will assault the stocks of RW Groups by using Yahoo Message Boards.

I used it on Diebold, the normal stock pattern was definitely altered, I think my prototype group may have had just a little to do with it.

We will be attacking more groups in the future.

[colonel odis]

9. might not be a good idea to broadcast that you're attempting

to influence stock prices.

[losdiablosgato]

7. Thru out the past 40 or so years both sides of the debate have done this

I remember that liberals boycotted Red Lobster for advertizing on rush.

I remember African Americans boycotted business in the civil rights era.

Both sides of the debat use this tactic to varying degrees.

[Malva Zebrina]

4. Ireland's article

Unless Hollywood, and the entertainment and broadcast industries, all want to live through an epoch of increasing content blackmail and blacklists, the wealthy folks who make a lot of money from those industries better wake up and start funding intensive and systematic research on the Christian right and its censorship crusades against sexual subversion and sin in the creative arts -- or soon it will be too late, and the "theocratic oligopoly" of which Martin Kaplan speaks will be so firmly established it cannot be dislodged.

I am not sure that this is just a little naive on the part of Mr. Ireland. It is my feeling that anyone involved is involved for one reason only--making money and are subject to the same pressures upon their bottom line as P&G and others mentioned in the article.

Moralistic concern about blacklists or blackmail, I suspect, does not take priority. I could be wrong, but I have no solution to offer either.

The point that no one is doing research because they cannot make a living at it, such as, for one, Sarah Diamond. ?? kind of demonstrates the point.


I sometimes passively muse that this upsurge toward religico-fascism is a result of something else going on in society and it is not the rise of homosexual or feminists or Wiccan power so much as a fear of something else and come to the conclusion that when society changes due to some event, perhaps catastrophic, they will deflate like a pricked balloon.

I also muse, since I am an atheist who has been far more aware of the rise than the average since atheists have been keeping track ever since Robertson appeared on the stage, that it is up to the Christain leaders and other interested parties who certainly would be affected negatively by a theocratic state coveted by the religico-fascists, to rise up, organize, join together and publically and loudly challenge their brothers in religion as to their mistaken ways re that religion. They can become more powerful than Dobsen if they would form a great wave of opposition to those homophobe hate groups.

That would mean, of course, some of them would have to come to grips with their own teachings on homosexuality. They might likely have to join arms with atheist groups in the common cause also, if what they desire is the stopping of this hurtful religious movement.

My two cents

[megatherium]

5. There is a lot of opposition to religious fascism in evangelical

Christian circles. A lot of different people, with a considerable diversity of beliefs, are joining hands to oppose what is happening. You might find evangelicals who think homosexuality is wrong but who join their gay neighbors, friends and relatives to fight for human rights; or evangelicals who believe we are in the end times but who understand that the antichrist refers to the military-industrial-entertainment complex as much as it refers to an actual person who will appear in the last days. There are evangelicals who believe in Genesis as literal truth, who interpret "having dominion over all the earth" as God's instructions to humankind to take care of the earth; these evangelicals are active in the environmental movement.

[Malva Zebrina]

6. I did not mean to imply that evangelicals or others were all Dobsonite

Dominionists. I am sure, as in any group, there are people who would have the same concerns as you or I. We might even find a few Dobsonites who share some our concerns. Unfortunately they have the same brand name (Christianity) and that is all the language I can make use of in our conversations, otherwise we would be full of disclaimers numbering in the tens of thousands for each and every member of every sect. That would imply a sort of looseness to the structure of any particular church, not good or bad, but which does not seem to be the case in those structures of which we speak. Berlet seems astounded at their organizational skills.

I wonder then, where does the pressure and the power to make P&G back down in the face of boycot threats come from? and why no visible organized resistance, or just mediocre power coming from those who are entlightened and see religious fascism lurking in these hate groups?

According to the article, those who were strongest in resistance to Robertson, the Christian extremists, and their rise to power, are gone and no longer activists. Of course, I am not aware of the entire population that is currently activist, so if anyone has more information, that would be appreciated.

[applegrove]

So sorry for those corporations. They will have to pick one half of

America or the other to sell to. (Isn't it great when sociopaths like Rove motivate part of the population into deluded self-interest????)

When will the corporations wake up?

[applegrove]

8. Delete - double post