How a tiny anti-gay non-profit is plotting to fill its depleted coffers: by waging a nationwide boycott against a corporate financial giant.
In 1799, before becoming the third Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr founded The Bank of The Manhattan Company. Burr would go on to murder Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and be charged years later with treason. He was never charged with murder and was acquitted of treason. In short, the man was like Teflon.
The Bank of The Manhattan Company today you and I know as Chase Bank (NYSE:JPM). Through the centuries it has withstood economic crisis, the Depression, wars, and practically every other challenge the United States of America has seen. It has gobbled up other financial giants, including J.P. Morgan & Co., Chase National Bank, Bank One, Chemical Bank, Washington Mutual, and others.
Today, a faith-based non-profit whose last publicly available tax return shows it to be $1 million in the red, is launching a campaign against the $100 billion international monolith, because its co-founder took offense to a leaked internal anonymous employee survey likely designed to help the banking giant better address the needs of its 260,000 employees.
NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, this afternoon launched a strangely-named campaign, VoidChase.
Luke Brinker at Equality Matters earlier this month detailed the genesis of what today has become an embarrassing notch in NOM’s worn-out belt of tricks.
The conservative media is falsely accusing JPMorgan Chase of giving its employees an “LGBT loyalty test” thanks to dishonest reporting by a number of anti-LGBT activists.
In a June 29 blog post, National Organization for Marriage (NOM) co-founder Robert George shared a message from an employee at JPMorgan Chase, who alleged that an internal employee survey had included a question asking employees to indicate whether they were any of the following:
1) A person with disabilities;
2) A person with children with disabilities;
3) A person with a spouse/domestic partner with disabilities;
4) A member of the LGBT community.
5) An ally of the LGBT community, but not personally identifying as LGBT.
George baselessly asserted that the survey was a warning to anti-LGBT employees:
The message to all employees is perfectly clear: You are expected to fall into line with the approved and required thinking. Nothing short of assent is acceptable. Silent dissent will no longer be permitted.
 Today, NOM claims it has “the smoking gun” on this innocuous employee survey.
NOM has obtained new evidence that shows Chase bank not only violated its employees’ privacy with invasive and inappropriate questions on an employee survey aimed at pushing an LGBT agenda, but that the company has lied to consumers and its own employees about the now infamous questions.
Remember, this is the National Organization For Marriage, the same folks whose constitutional law professor Chairman hasn’t won a single case for NOM in years.Â
How did NOM “obtain new evidence”?Â
Breitbart.
It’s shocking that in the world that NOM supports — where corporations are people and corporations have religious beliefs — NOM believes those same corporations don’t have the right to ask employees to take a voluntary and anonymous poll about whether or not they are or have family members who have disabilities, and whether or not they are or support members of the LGBT community.
Jeremy Hooper of Good As You actually broke the boycott news before even NOM announced it this afternoon.
Calling it a “fake, wholly concocted, and truly absurd ‘scandal,'” Hooper writes that “NOM is now going after companies for simply asking employees an LGBT-inclusive question as part of a longer list of questions on any number of topics.”
Hooper sarcastically quips that “NOM’s boycotts did put Starbucks and General Mills out of business, so Chase ought to be scared.”
The Board of Directors of Chase — the mega-too-big-to-fail financial giant founded by a man who avoided being locked up for murder and treason — if they even know or care about this “boycott,” are likely laughing hysterically right now.
And probably ordering up another survey.
NOM, by the way, defines itself as “a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.”
“Founded in 2007 in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures, NOM serves as a national resource for marriage-related initiatives at the state and local level.”
How does this have anything to do with their core mission? NOM seems to be moving to become the leader of the anti-gay movement. Let the infighting begin!
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UPDATE: 07.21.14 — After five days, NOM has managed to get just 5172 people to sign its petition. That’s a mere 1000 people per day, for the nation’s top anti-gay marriage organization, fueled with millions of dollars and the top CRM resources.