The nation’s top anti-gay marriage group is starting a boycott of Target after the multi-billion dollar off-price retailer joined with other major corporations in signing a brief supporting same-sex marriage.
National Organization For Marriage president Brian Brown today announced his anti-gay group’s latest fundraising and email-harvesting scheme: a boycott of the $73 billion mass-merchanidising retailer, Target (NYSE:TGT).
The 2000-stores Minnesota-based giant this week signed on to an amicus brief supporting same-sex marriage.Â
NOM’s Brown writes that the amicus brief “uses extremely charged language to refer to laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. It calls them “the states’ bans [on same-sex marriage]” and, even more radically, ‘marriage discrimination’Â laws!”
Without providing any rationale at all, the brief states bluntly that “Same-sex couples should have the same right to marry as opposite-sex couples,” and refers to Indiana and Wisconsin’s traditional marriage laws as “an unproductive, inequitable, and unjust status quo.“
Perhaps most ridiculously, the brief—while touting the benefits of pro-LGBT businesses—presents the claim that “corporate cultures that don’t encourage openness and inclusiveness leave employees feeling isolated and fearful.“ [All emphasis original]
Brown announces his boycott by stating, “I’m announcing a new boycott today, against Target, for insulting consumers like you and me.”
The brief they signed in court this week insinuates that people like you and me, who would vote to uphold traditional marriage, as akin to segregationists and racial bigots. Would you want to shop at a place that viewed you in that way?
Nearly 60 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, and over 70 percent of Americans under 30 do as well. But Brown seemingly is unaware of these statistics.Â
Target also complains that such a law “upsets our business philosophy and prevents [us] from reaching our full economic potential because it dissuades employees from living and working in the jurisdictions where we do, or want to do, business.”
Really? I know that you, like me, don’t see things this way. We’d most like to live in a land where the true and noble good of marriage is upheld and protected in law as an institution about the welfare and rights of children rather than about the capricious desires of adults.
What Brown doesn’t mention in his boycott pitch is that the action and associated petition is being run out of ActRight, a right-wing petitions, financial payment processor, and response to the Left’s ActBlue. Brown also doesn’t mention his personal involvement in ActRight, a 501(c)(4) of which he is both Chairman and founder.
Inconceivably, the petition page boasts 459,370 signatures as of this writing — despite the campaign being launched literally less than one hour ago.
NOM ended 2012 with a $1 million deficit. NOM’s 990 form, per Guidestar, for 2013 has not yet been filed.
Organized boycotts are an excellent, low-budget way to raise funds, harvest email addresses for future fundraising efforts, and keep an organization’s profile relevant and in the news.Â
NOM’s boycotts are historically both laughable and ineffective. Their “Dump Starbucks” boycott earned them less than 70,000 supporters over the course of three years. Even more embarrassing, NOM’s recent “Void Chase” boycott has earned them less than 7,000 supporters.
Generally, boycotts are counter-effective, driving opponents of the boycott to the “target,” in this case, Target.