The American Family Association, a James Dobson group, is fond of instigating boycotts against companies for, well, anything that gets their panties in a bunch. And they usually lose. As the Carpetbagger Report explains:
The AFA launched a nine-year boycott of Disney, for example, during which time none of the group’s demands were met and the company enjoyed a surge in profits. The AFA also launched boycotts against Crest toothpaste, Volkswagen, Tide detergent, Clorox bleach, Pampers, MTV, Abercrombie & Fitch, K-Mart, Burger King, the Carl’s Jr. hamburger chain, Kraft Foods, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Old Navy stores, NutriSystem, and American Airlines. Late last year, the AFA went after the movie "Shark Tale," because the group believed the movie was designed to brainwash children into accepting gay rights. Then, it was American Girl dolls. Then it was Target for its lack of the word "Christmas" in its advertising. The whole thing is pretty embarrassing, but the AFA just keeps doing it.
So AFA boycotts, the object of the boycott ignores the AFA, and life goes on.
But for some reason, when the AFA threatened a boycott against Ford last June, demanding that Ford stop advertising in gay-oriented magazines like The Advocate, Ford folded like a cheap deck of cars.
According to the AFA and media reports over the past two weeks, in order to avoid a boycott from the extremist gay-hating organization, Ford allegedly agreed to:
1. No longer run ads promoting Jaguar or Land Rover in the gay press.
2. No longer support gay events or organizations.
3. Continue running Volvo ads in the gay press, but no longer tailor those ads to the gay community (i.e., in the future such ads would be the same ads that are run in the mainstream media, rather than the crafting the ads to appeal to a gay readership).
This caused a bit of an uproar, not only in the gay community, but among anybody interested in civil rights.
Happily, as reported by AMERICABlog (who has trumpted this issue for a few weeks now), "Ford addressed and resolved each of our three concerns regarding the above":
1. Ford announced that it will continue to support gay organizations and gay events in the coming year and beyond.
2. Ford is going to run advertisements in the gay media NOT ONLY promoting the Jaguar and Land Rover brands, but the ads will promote ALL of Fords brands, by name, including Jaguar and Land Rover.
3. Ford states unequivocally that it will continue to tailor its ads for the specific audience it is trying to reach, and then goes one step further. Ford challenges us to keep an eye out on their upcoming ads in order to verify that they will in fact be tailored.
There is no other way to read this than that Ford did the right thing. Whether or not an agreement was reached with the American Family Association – and the AFA has a record of crowing about such "victories" when no such victory occurred (sounds a lot like our president) – Ford has rectified the real or perceived problem, and the AFA has been shown to have no clothes (other than a very rusty chastity belt).
You can thank Ford via this online form. Or, if you want, you can pray for the AFA.