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BUYING FOR BIGOTRY: Christian Group Releases Rankings Of Anti-Gay, Anti-Choice Companies

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Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby Earn Highest Scores On Inaugural ‘Faith Equality Index’

A conservative Christian group has taken a page out of the Human Rights Campaign’s playbook, releasing a ranking of corporations that are most hostile to LGBT and reproductive rights. 

Not surprisingly, Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby received the highest scores on the inaugural Faith Equality Index, put out earlier this month by a group called Faith Driven Consumer, which is encouraging people to “buycott” companies that don’t share their “biblical worldview.” 

“Just in time for the busy Christmas shopping season — we launched our ground-breaking new scoring system rating major brands on their relative faith-compatibility,” Faith Driven Consumer said in a news release. “It’s important for everyone to understand what we are asking Corporate America to do — acknowledge us on equal footing with the other groups they embrace and celebrate.”

According to The Washington Times, the Faith Equality Index is a response to HRC’s Corporate Equality Index and Buying For Workplace Equality guide, which for more than a decade have rated companies based on LGBT-inclusive policies and procedures. Using the hashtag #AddUsIn, Faith Driven Consumer is even attempting to co-opt the LGBT “rainbow of diversity.” 

“In a marketplace that celebrates diversity, the Faith Equality Index focuses major brands on the newest color in their rainbow, Faith Driven Consumers,” Faith Driven Consumer founder Chris Stone said in a statement. “Like every community, Faith Driven Consumers expect to be welcomed by the companies they do business with and work for.”

LOOK: Twitter Mocks Gun Toting Christian Pastor For Viral Protest Of Starbucks Red Cups That ‘Hate Jesus’

Faith Driven Consumer claims to represent 41 million Christian consumers who spend $2 trillion annually.

Earlier his year, Faith Driven Consumer led campaigns to return Phil Robertson to “Duck Dynasty,” get SunTrust Bank to reverse a decision to fire the Benham brothers, and protest Houston officials’ decision to subpoena pastors’ sermons in defending the city’s Equal Rights Ordinance.

The group also got involved in the controversy over “religious freedom” laws in Arkansas and Indiana that aimed to give businesses a “license to discriminate” against LGBT people. 

“We are disappointed by the misleading and inflammatory nature of many people’s comments in reaction to recent events surrounding Indiana’s religious freedom law,” Stone said in March. “Such language presents an obstacle to the important issue of achieving universal equality in our culture and in the marketplace.”

The Faith Equality Index rates more than 300 companies based on 14 criteria, and lists the ratings alongside their scores on HRC’s CEI, the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility’s Corporate Inclusion Index (CII), Black Enterprise’s Best 40 list for African-American diversity and Diversity Inc.’s Top 50 ranking for diversity. 

Criteria for the Faith Equality Index include: 

  • Use of the word “Christmas” in seasonal advertising
  • Respect for, acknowledgment of, and compatibility with a comprehensive pro-life view on abortion, embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia — either by supporting these positions publicly, financially or with in-kind resources equal, at minimum, to support given alternative positions, or remaining silent and neutral on these issues 
  • Proactive public support for legislative, regulatory, and/or judicial protections for religious liberty including freedom of speech, association and expression
  • Respect for, acknowledgement of, and compatibility with biblical teaching on sexuality, gender, marriage and family — either by supporting these positions publicly, financially or with in-kind resources equal, at minimum, to support given alternative positions, or remaining silent and neutral on these issues
  • Promote or support wholesome images in marketing and culture while refraining from the promotion or support of pornography, sexual immorality or the sexual exploitation of individuals, as viewed through a biblical lens 

Here are the seven companies that received the highest scores on the Faith Equality Index: 

  • Chick-fil-A: 63 
  • Hobby Lobby: 62 
  • Interstate Batteries: 61 
  • Tyson Foods: 60 
  • Cracker Barrel: 53 
  • Walmart: 51 
  • Thrivent Financial: 50 

And here are the 10 that received the lowest scores:   

  • Bank of America: 11
  • Unilever: 11
  • DirecTV: 14
  • Expedia: 15
  • Nationwide: 16
  • Pfizer: 16
  • Microsoft: 17
  • AT&T: 17
  • Apple: 19
  • T-Mobile: 19

Chick-fil-A is, of course, is well-known for its outspoken opposition to same-sex marriage, although the Faith Equality Index doesn’t appear to take into account a franchisee’s recent decision to sponsor an LGBT Christian film festival. Hobby Lobby, meanwhile, was the lead plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case challenging the contraceptive mandate under the Affordable Care Act. 

Starbucks, currently under fire from right-wingers for its Christmas-less coffee cups, received a score of 27 on the Faith Equality Index, including five out of five points for the use of the word “Christmas” in seasonal advertising. (Again, no word on whether Faith Driven Consumer will be lowering the company’s score.) 

As for Interstate Batteries and Cracker Barrel, one columnist writes: “So, if you identify as a Christian it may be time to mentally prepare to find a car battery or hunk of cheese under your Christmas tree.” 

Needless to say, that would be better than the lump of coal people deserve if they allow prejudice against the LGBT community, women and religious minorities to motivate their shopping decisions. 

 

Image via Facebook 

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

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20 hours ago

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April 25, 2024

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Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.

Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.

But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”

RELATED: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.

“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.

Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.

“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.

RELATED: Justices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.

“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.

“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”

Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”

CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘They Will Have Thugs?’: Lara Trump’s Claim RNC Will ‘Physically Handle the Ballots’ Stuns

 

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