The Family Research Council is targeting Target for their support of same-sex marriage, claiming the retail giant is disenfranchising voters’ “right” to vote on marriage and is working to put anti-gay adoption agencies out of business. Target, whose annual sales last year soared to $70 billion, recently began selling t-shirts with LGBT-friendly messages, and is donating 100% of the proceeds to the Family Equality Council, an LGBT non-profit whose roots trace back to 1979.
“By making Target a clearinghouse for donations to the Family Equality Council, Target Corp has sent the message that it is 100 percent behind the group’s efforts to deny me the right to vote on marriage at the ballot box, and to put out of business adoption agencies that prioritize placing children with mothers and fathers,” the Family Research Council proposes as text in their campaign, “Targeting Christian Adoption?” that anti-gay consumers can use to send to Target.
To be clear, no one has the “right” to vote on marriage. The Supreme Court has defined marriage as an inherent civil right, and the founding fathers were clear that the rights of the minority are never to be voted on by the majority — one reason for our system of representative democracy.
It is entirely unclear how the Family Equality Council is working “to put out of business adoption agencies that prioritize placing children with mothers and fathers,” and of course FRC, a certified anti-gay hate group, offers zero evidence.
A form letter FRC includes in their campaign reads:
Dear Target Corp.,
I strongly object to your recent decision to provide free advertising and raise funds for the Family Equality Council (FEC). The FECs chief objective, according to their website, is to pass legislation on the local and national level that would effectively shut down Christian based adoption agencies by ordering all adoption agencies to no longer prioritize placing a child in a home with both a mom and dad, despite the overwhelming evidence that such households are by far the best environment for a child. This has happened in Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.
By making Target a clearinghouse for donations to the FEC, your company has sent the message that it is 100 percent behind the groups efforts to deny me the right to vote on marriage at the ballot box, and to put out of business adoption agencies that prioritize placing children with mothers and fathers.
I urge you to cease funding this anti-Christian adoption group, and resume a neutral position on social engineering.
Thank you.
A reminder to Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council: This is America. We have something called separation of Church and State. Your religion cannot make rules for civil and governmental organizations.
If you’d like to start your own anti-gay adoption agency that takes no money from the government, you are welcome to do so.
Via an email exchange, a spokesperson for Jennifer Chrisler, Executive Director of the Family Equality Council, who last month graciously invited Tony Perkins into her home, responded to the attack by FRC on Target, telling The New Civil Rights Movement:
“We look forward to a time where all children have access to loving, stable homes. More than thirty years of social research and mainstream child welfare agencies agree that children raised by parents who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender have the same opportunities and chances for success as those raised in families with a mom and a dad, and we have an obligation as a society to ensure that every child has parents who love and care for them.”
Bottom line: there are at least 2.9 million homeless children in the United States. Unless Mr. Perkins would like to invite them into his home, he should stay out of the way of placing them in good, loving homes.