|

Ford profits from traditional values boycott – UPDATED

Byjonathan

In 2007 and 2008 the boycott-happy Christian rightist organization American Family Association was touting its alleged success at beating down Ford Motor Company with a boycott because of that company’s gay-friendly marketing at Pride events.

Never mind that American car manufacturers across the board were suffering from weak sales and bloated inventories of gas hogs during an economic recession.

Today, Bloomberg business analysts project Ford may report a 2009 net profit of as much as $2.65 billion.

While Ford has been earning billions of dollars the past year, the AFA website has gone strangely silent about its  boycott, taking credit instead for such things as blocking the nomination of Erroll Southers, to head up the Transportation Security Administration.

AFA is one of the most self-promoting (as well as self-righteous) organizations I’ve ever seen and they do an amazing job of stroking their maghas.

If Ford’s experience is any indication of real world results, manufacturers might want to consider ways to get on the AFA’s shit list.

UPDATE (01/28/2010):

I also posted this on my blog at Open Salon.  A reader comment there by the hetero-pride activist and openly Christian Philos 777 alerts me of the need to update this post.

According to media reports, AFA unilaterally ended their boycott of Ford in 2008, claiming “the conditions of the original agreement presented in fall 2005 have been met.”

I was inspired to write this post for the simple reason that I was unable to find any information about the end of the boycott on the AFA website (google link), and I cannot find any there now.

Still, the end of the boycott was reported elsewhere, and I failed to notice that.  It changes the look of things, but only slightly.

I’m not the only person questioning the effectiveness of the AFA boycott strategy for stoking members and raising millions for the Wildmons in Tupelo.  According to one Business Journal blogger at that time, Ford remains staunchly “pro-gay”, despite the petition rattling and boycott threats.  The writer casts other doubts on the AFA announcement as well.

I would also like to ask Philos:  What happened in the year and a half or so after the boycott ended?  Market trends rarely shift so quickly.

Did millions of AFA members suddenly fulfill their pent up desires to go out and buy Ford products during the middle of a recession after the boycott was over, causing Ford sales to soar?

I didn’t think so either.

Wait... there's more!

  • Retreat and Adventure — Midwest Men’s Festival

    When I received my HIV diagnosis in 1998, I withdrew from my community of gay men. I “went to ground”, thinking that isolation was the only safe place to avoid being criticized for seroconverting at such a late date, when we were all supposed to know better.

    This past week has been yet another bifurcation point in my life. I returned to a community I have known about, if not been a steady part of, for more than 30 years. A community of men whom I could touch and hug. Men whose tears might wet my face and whose body heat and life forces I could feel in ways that can only happen in person. It really did feel like coming home.

  • The truth about Truvada: PrEP won’t stop AIDS

    I’m willing to grant that gay men are entitled to use PrEP… provided they have access to all the information they need to make an informed decision. Informed consent has been a hallmark of the HIV and AIDS research and prevention efforts for three decades, and that shouldn’t be waived for the campaign favoring PrEP.

    Gay men deserve to know that all the claims for Truvada reducing the risk of acquiring HIV-positivity  are based on trials—funded by Gilead—that emphasized the importance of using condoms…

  • Confessions of a heretic AIDS dissident

    You might not know it from reading the comments left here on my blog, but there are more than a few AIDS dissidents who really don’t like how I think or what I write about.

    There’s a whole thread on a very popular Facebook page called “Rethinking AIDS”, discussing my open letter to Dora. Last I looked, that thread had nearly 100 comments, and very few of those comments were about Dora, Ruggiero or the defense of academic freedom.

    No, the gist of the thread was whether or not I am in “the AIDS Zone.” It seems that because I did not use “air quotes” around the term “HIV disease”, I’m not really an AIDS dissident. Others took issue with my post for daring to publish that some AIDS Rethinkers hold a very narrow view about “HIV” and “AIDS”, while others of us are merely “questioning” the whole affair. None of them chose to comment directly to me here.

    Some of the most visible and vocal Rethinkers seem intent on imposing their own “beliefs” (another loaded term that deserves quotes) on the entire movement. There has long been a tendency to try to impose a sort of litmus test to determine whether or not one is a true “AIDS dissident”.

    Since I first met the AIDS dissident community via the AIDS Myth Exposed forums—since renamed Questioning AIDS—several years ago, I’ve become aware of several of the various factions, distinctive personalities and divisions within that broad group. Now I’m finding it ironic just how guilty some of these people are at their own version of “bone-pointing”.

  • Here’s to Gos Blank

    Most of us in his Internet online community knew Gos as a vocal advocate of the AIDS dissident community; a group of people who question and challenge the mainstream theory that the so-called Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the sole and sufficient cause of AIDS. Yes, Gos was HIV-positive, but he insisted that the available scientific evidence does not support the notion that it is a sexually transmitted pathogen, capable of causing disease. Gos believed his positive test was a “false positive,” and the result of his pre-existing illnesses.

  • Pharmaceutical solutions to AIDS are not enough

    A recent phone conversation with a friend is helping me to continue to refine what I want to focus on as an AIDS dissident activist. In a passionate outburst that revealed a new side of his character, he blurted out his dismay that our society in general and our gay community in particular seems to be willing to settle for a solution to AIDS that relies exclusively on drugs from the pharmaceutical industry.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *