Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMay 20th, 2010
Peter LaBarbera is back to jousting at windmills. He’s decided to enact a one-man boycott on all businesses which value their gay employees or customers.
His first quest is Progressive Insurance and he’s found a Sancho Panza to help him. Jamil J. Adair of Horizon City, Texas, has canceled his insurance policy with Progressive.
You can read his entire rant on The Peter’s site, but here’s the amusing part:
Progressive Insurance: It may appear that I am merely one man … but my message resonates within the hearts and minds of millions, upon millions, of Americans who firmly believe what I believe. For every ONE GLBT member that you support, there are FOUR HUNDRED more of us, standing together, in opposition. I have passed this information to every member of my family, church group, and contact list. You will be receiving many more cancellation letters shortly. [emphasis in the original]
Four hundred to one. WOW!
And considering that there are a lot of folks who support gay rights and even more who would not use a company’s pro-gay positions as a reason to pay more for insurance, that’s quite a statement. What kind of crazy bigot-world do Adair and The Peter think they live in?
Do they really think that gays only make up less than one quarter of one percent of the population? Or is this just another example of the magic math that they teach in home schooling and evangelical private schools?
Oh, and one more thought… if you set out to publicly denounce a business because you don’t like their policies on gay issues, you may want to consider that folks may use the same criteria to judge you. Which, I suppose, means that Mr. Adair is perfectly fine with any loss of business he may suffer for his ideology.
Which is why I would recommend that those who are looking to change their insurance policy may want to consider Progressive. And that those who are responsible for making decisions about pay point or ATM machinery for their business may wish to avoid Merchants First Choice.
UPDATE: To make it clear, Mr. Adair is the President and CEO of Merchants First Choice.
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Timothy Kincaid
May 20th, 2010
No insult to home schoolers or private schools. I know that not all of them are bad. I went to a few private schools and one of them had quite high math standards.
Grant
May 20th, 2010
I just texted my partner who is a Sr. VP at a credit union here in SoCal, to ask if they use MFC. Whether or not they do, he’ll be interested to know this about Mr. Adair’s company.
Richard Rush
May 20th, 2010
“Magic math” is just one small part of the Super Christian world of
Magic Truth.
marc
May 20th, 2010
I’m guessing that Mr. Adair is associated with the Merchants First Choice business mentioned at the end, but there is no documentation presented to demonstrate that.
KZ
May 20th, 2010
“For every ONE GLBT member that you support, there are FOUR HUNDRED more of us, standing together, in opposition.”
What vitriol! I guess someone hasn’t been getting the attention he so desperately wants. If this goes anyway like the idiotic AFA boycotts, I’m not worried.
Boo
May 20th, 2010
Do they really think that gays only make up less than one quarter of one percent of the population?
Nope, you read it wrong. He’s not claiming there are 400 heterosexuals to every homosexual, he’s claiming there are 400 homophobes to every homosexual, so the ratio of hetero to homo would be quite a bit higher.
Candace
May 20th, 2010
Cathy and I both have Progressive insurance, so we already canceled out Jamil’s 1-man boycott.
P-Pete seems a little edgy today, what? The single-tail must be in for repair.
Timothy Kincaid
May 21st, 2010
marc,
I am certain of the connection.
Mr. Adair is the president and CEO of Merchants First Choice. The corporation is registered under his name at his home address. I followed up with Mr. Adair at the email provided by MFC and he confirmed that he wrote the letter.
Jason D
May 21st, 2010
“Do they really think that gays only make up less than one quarter of one percent of the population?
Nope, you read it wrong. He’s not claiming there are 400 heterosexuals to every homosexual, he’s claiming there are 400 homophobes to every homosexual, so the ratio of hetero to homo would be quite a bit higher.”
Unfortunately he read it right. Adair, the Peter, etc assume that that gay people are the only people who support gay rights. Somehow our Parents, Friends, Coworkers, Family, Neighbors, and random progressives don’t exist to Adair.
Maurice Lacunza
May 21st, 2010
Thank you for the tip. As a pro-gaytagonist, I immediately emailed the merchant company and advised them that I would spread the word of their bigotry to my church, family, friends and acquaintances. I advised them to seek such merchant services elsewhere.
Maurice Lacunza
May 21st, 2010
From: Jamil (merchantschoice@earthlink.net)
To: Maurice Lacunza
Sent: Fri 5/21/10 2:54 PM
Good.
=================
I think Jamil really has it in for gay people. Hopefully this won’t have repercussions for me. But stand up, I will.
justsearching
May 22nd, 2010
This man is an absolute clown. Because he is against equality when it pertains to sexual orientation (or he denies the validity of that construct) he sees himself as “the bigger kid on the playground that pulled the ‘bully’ off the smaller kid.”
And when he refers to “Action” in quotes, is he referring to gay sex? I can’t think of what else it could be.
And the 400 to 1 business; that’s utterly beyond me. A majority of Americans are against DODA. Near a majority would be OK with civil unions. A small minority of Americans are so homophobic that they would change insurance policies over the company’s policy on LGBT causes.
I think what this man is trying to tell us is that he knows FOUR HUNDRED homophobes and only ONE LGBT person. That’s probably the basis for his stats.
justsearching
May 22nd, 2010
“Progressive’s website boasts of the company’s 100-percent ranking on the Human Rights Campaign’s rigged pro-homosexual ‘Corporate Equality Index.'”
If the stats are rigged, then the company isn’t 100% pro-homosexual and Barbera should be happy. If the company really is 100% pro-homosexual than the stats aren’t rigged. Barbera must be having a grouchy bad day.
mikeksf
May 22nd, 2010
Yesterday, Friday 5/21, I followed your link to Merchants First Choice and called their 800#. I left a message for Mr. Jamil that I would be contacting all of my business associates and associations to make sure they were aware of his positions and his relationship with LeBarbera. About an hour later I received a return call from Mr. J himself. He told me I was the first call he’d received and that these were his personal views and not those of his company. Of course, he thought gays should not be fired, he was only protesting Progressive support of the homosexual agenda to indoctrinate his children and he had the right to express his religious views, bla, bla, bla. When I asked which groups he of course couldn’t name them (“I don’t have those notes”). We had quite a spirited discussion, fairly civilized all things considered, no screaming names and, actually, I thought it was sort of a fun exercise. Of course one of total futility.
Steven R.
May 23rd, 2010
How well does Mr. Adair know the man with whom he is hooking up? Does Mr. Adair know about the gay porn collection, the attendance at a sadomasochism event for gay men dressed in a “leather man” disguise, the photographic documentation of prurience at a fetish fair in San Francisco? The bizarre, endless, diagnosable obsession with homosexuality? Or the curious complete silence about the George Rekers situation?
There is some rough truth, by the way, to Mr. Adair’s assertion that he speaks for 400 other people who aren’t writing to the company. It may not be exactly 400, but large businesses do presume that for every person who takes the trouble to write or call to complain, there were many more who hold the same views, but don’t bother to write or call. But, the trouble is for Mr. Adair and Mr. LaBarbera, the reverse here is true as well: Progressive improves its brand image with many hundreds of thousands of people by advertising in gay publications (including websites) and otherwise being gay-friendly. But probably very, very few gay people are going to write — at least without explicit provocation — to Progressive and thank them, because it’s kind of insulting to feel like a company needs to be “thanked” for basic decency — like writing a company to thank them for not engaging in racial discrimination. But masses of gay and gay-friendly people nonetheless are quietly left with a favorable impression. Favorable impressions are extremely valuable to Progressive: They plant seeds for future sales.
I think Progressive knows, darn well, that their gay-friendliness is good for their bottom line. I admit to having no data on this whatsoever, but probably gay people tend to be good customers for car insurance companies, while the American Family Association types probably are not. If have you a crazy belief system, you probably don’t have good judgment or due caution in driving. If you don’t believe in evolution, your sense of scientific laws generally, including those relevant to safe driving (e.g., the number of seconds needed to decelerate safely), is probably not very good.
It’s similar to the reasons insurance companies offer discounts to “good students.” Being an “A” student is probably correlated with wise, safe driving habits. Likewise I imagine homophobes tend to be bad drivers — both because ignorant people tend to be bad drivers, and angry and tense people tend to be bad drivers.
Meantime, I’m happy to refrain from giving business to Merchants First Choice, and encourage other prospective Merchants First Choice customers to do the same.
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