Box Turtle Bulletin

NOM’s dumps are flattening out

For a while it was really exciting to see just how far National Organization for Marriage’s big dumps were going to run. But now things are flattening out and fewer and fewer people are joining the NOM dump parade.

Since the 5th of July, the National Organization for Marriage has added 1,178 new signatories to its Dump Starbucks project and since the 13th an additional 861 have promised to look for alternatives to General Mills products, bringing the totals to 46,624 and 23,915 respectively. And that’s something to be proud of.

Okay, it’s not all roses and spilt coffee. Yes, we have to admit that the 40 Eagle Scouts who have returned their badges to the Boy Scouts of America (about 0.07% of all living Eagle Scouts) are about 10 times the ratio of dumpers to US General Mills customers (about 0.007%). But, by golly, we’re sure the numbers would be much higher if our Big Dump supporters were not boycotting Apple and Microsoft and their local library and the US Postal Service and the local tribe’s smoke signals and not cowering under their beds eating deep fried chicken sandwiches.

SERIOUSLY?

The National Organization for Marriage has alerted us to an egregious bullying case. It’s this:

Seriously.

NOM’s promoting a bizarre screed by one Anne Sorock as if it made sense. Anne writes:

Is it inclusive to introduce a highly politicized debate into a cookie’s branding, thereby opening up the opportunity to alienate a huge–if not majority–portion of your consumers? No, it is selective inclusion, a negation in terms, or as I call it, “Bully Marketing.”

I’m tempted to think this is a poe, an attempt to parody those who too easily accuse others of bullying. Or perhaps it’s a feeble attempt to hijack pro-equality language (as our opponents have tried with “bigotry” and “intolerance” and “hate”) and render it meaningless. But Anne Sorock seems to mean it in full:

…a small, relentless group of leftist activists intimidate large companies into embracing the carefully calculated leftist narrative of inclusiveness and tolerance, which really just means, promote their politics.

…what Kraft and others are doing is making the “facilitating payment” that allows them to continue to operate their storefronts. It’s the money in the envelope that allows them to be left them alone–for now.

And then she directs readers to the US government’s anti-bullying site.  So once again, but this time as a question: Seriously?

I wonder if she imagines a late-night scene in a underground parking lot, with the Kraft Foods CEO cornered by a half a dozen menacing gay activists, all of them chanting, “Make the cookie! Make the cookie! MAKE THE COOKIE!!!” Until the poor CEO weeps a bit, falls to the ground, and gives in.

So listen, all you anti-marriage folk. I know you’re upset that you’re losing in court. You’re demoralized that state legislatures are turning against you. You’re seriously freaked out that voter referendums are no longer an automatic win. I know that your next strategy is set up a legal case that marriage equality threatens your most basic Constitutional liberties. But (last time) seriously, if you want the nation’s great undecided middle to accept your claims of intimidation and persecution, you might want to invoke something more terrifying than a $70 billion company extorted into releasing picture of a cookie.

NOM’s breakfast dump heaps up

It’s been a week since I brought you the exciting news of how the National Organization for Marriage’s big Dump General Mills project just keeps going on and on. And in that time the number of those dedicated souls who vow that they will “look for substitutes” has grown by a colossal 18%, all the way to 23,054.

Much of the growth can be attributed to support by the American Family Association, whose followers number at least ten thousand. And one thing you can say about the AFA supporters, when it comes to the cause of protecting the family from the militant homosexual lobby, they are committed. Or, at least, if they are not yet committed, they certainly should be.

NOM’s General Mills protest is now a giant “dump”

OneNewsNow, the American Family Association’s project to bring us the news that the mainstream press ignores (including all sorts or facts, numbers, studies, reports, quotes, and all sorts of information that you can’t find anywhere else) has finally taken notice of the National Organization for Marriage’s boycott of General Mills. And today they are sharing with America’s families that “General Mills earns spot on boycott list”.

And as a result, the listing of those who pledge to “look for substitutes” to General Mills brands has soared to new heights. Currently at 19,555 signatories on the DumpGeneralMills.com page – a full 398 more than it was on the 5th – it seems almost certain that this dump will pass 20,000 and become truly a giant dump, and as I’m sure we all know, it’s hard to ignore a giant dump.

Dear Diary: A Fact Checker at NOM

This excerpt from the diary of a NOM fact checker has somehow fallen into my hands. I cannot vouch for its authenticity.

Dear Diary,

This morning I was trying to use a decorative letter opener to cut the despair out of my soul when a NOM staffer dropped off a blog entry for me to fact check. “Make sure it’s accurate,” he said. He must be new.

He’d been told to write about our Starbucks boycott. I’d forgotten there were jobs here worse than mine. Starbucks stock shot up after we announced the boycott, but his article claimed the price has fallen lately, and after more than two months it’s finally a smidge below where we started.

Hooray, apparently. God, the desperation around here is so thick they should spread it on white bread and serve it with tea.

Anyway, I checked the stock price — OMG! it had dipped a bit, then risen, but then dipped again, most recently since about June 20.  So this was…correct?

Oh, why couldn’t I have just stopped there. I could have been the hero, could have announced, Hey everyone, we’re saying something TRUE, could have been included in the alcohol-free celebratory sniffing of white-board markers. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly $M last month for marriage

Seattle Times

Supporters of gay marriage in Washington state said Monday that they raised more than $952,000 last month for the campaign to uphold the state’s new law, which is currently on hold pending the outcome of a November ballot measure.

But that’s just last month

As of Monday, Washington United for Marriage said it had raised more than $2 million for the campaign to fight back attempts to overturn the law. Preserve Marriage Washington, which collected the signatures to get R-74 on the ballot, has raised more than $135,000, according to the most recent numbers with the Public Disclosure Commission, though it hasn’t yet submitted its totals for June.

The Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage, which was involved in ballot measures that overturned same-sex marriage in California and Maine, has said it will fight to strike down the law, and has loaned regional coordinator Christopher Plante to the local campaign.

“We expect to be outspent on this,” said Plante, who is now serving as deputy campaign manager for Preserve Marriage.

Ya think?

NOM’s big dump update

Few things are as exciting as clicking over to the Dump Starbucks and Dump General Mills pages to see just how many new signatures the National Organization for Marriage has racked up. Since our last report,

Dump General Mills now has 18,157 pledges to “look for substitutes” to General Mills brands. That’s up a whopping 154 people from just Tuesday. If this were a petition to get Sheriff Andy to let Opie join the baseball team, that would be astounding.

Dump Starbucks has 45,446 signatories, up 104 signatures since the 2nd. As this is an older boycott, the numbers are starting to level out and probably won’t get above 50,000 before the effort is removed from the web and everyone pretends it didn’t happen.

In comparison, 62,630 people signed a petition to get a Virginia athletic club to allow same-sex couples to register for family access to a swimming pool, and 269,884 people signed a petition to ask Citibank and Barclays to publicly condemn Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill. I don’t believe that either of these efforts got press attention or frantic emails sent out to ‘concerned citizens’.

I don’t just comment on NOM’s abysmal PR failures to mock them. I do so because it is important that media and legislators begin to understand that behind their hype and pretense is no substance.

If our community wanted to head up a campaign to boycott Starbucks “because they serve overpriced crappy coffee”, it would take little effort to find tons of people who don’t like Starbucks. But NOM’s moral franticness and hectic histrionic ‘protection of a sacred rite’ can barely scrape together half a hundred thousand. People just don’t support them. They just don’t care.

We may continue for a few more years to lose votes and polls. But the fire is gone, the passion is gone, and only a tiny fragment of the population is sufficiently opposed to marriage equality to type in their name in an online list.

Exciting dump update

The National Organization for Marriage’s big dump just keeps growing. Today the number of people who have pledged to look for substitutes for General Mills brands has shot up to 18,003. That’s an increase of 239 people in just one day!

If it keeps up at this rate, by September the NOM dump will be at nearly one hundredth of one percent of the population. And that, my friends, will make General Mills sit up and take notice.

And let’s not forget that this exciting development represents at least 18,000 people nation wide who care enough about this issue to type their name. And that sort of activism can translate to literally dozens of protesters. Truly this grass roots endeavor eclipses even 2010’s Tour of Mostly Empty City Plazas.

NOM’s takes ‘dump’ nationwide

The National Organization for Marriage has exciting news about their very successful “dump” campaigns. Although it may have about 20,000 stores, Starbucks will soon be feeling the bite of NOM’s reach and influence. In addition to the 45,342 people who have pledged not to buy Starbucks are the grandchildren and bingo partners of these dedicated souls who will not receive Starbucks giftcards this Christmas. And with press coverage in many newspapers and Sunday inserts, their dump efforts have gotten tremendous visibility.

In a move that is certain to severely cut into the profits of Starbucks, NOM has announced an alternative to the ubiquitous coffee house: Jitters and Bliss coffee. Now when you feel an urge for a caramel macchiato, instead of dropping in to a Starbuck you can instead go online and order a tin of coffee (comparably priced to Starbucks), wait for it to be delivered (shipping free with $50 purchase), brew it up, and enjoy a delicious cup of coffee free from the guilt of supporting the homosexual agenda. And best of all, that cup of coffee will taste twice as blissful after a week or two of no-caffeine jitters.

More recently, NOM is now charging at the front of a vast cavalcade of boycotters who have vowed to go without General Mills products. That’s right, no Haagen-Dazs, Pillsbury, or Green Giant for them. (Star Tribune)

Minnesota for Marriage leaders are heading into the summer months with a dogged focus on keeping supporters energized and pushing back hard if other Minnesota businesses surface to oppose the amendment.

When General Mills stepped into the fray, Minnesota for Marriage immediately issued news releases that said “the Green Giant, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Kix and Trix have all declared war on Marriage” and that the company was promoting “genderless marriage.”

Angela Beeney of Plymouth and 4-year-old Ivy Brandon of Hastings, in foreground, dropped off General Mills products in Golden Valley to protest the company's opposition to the marriage amendment. - Star Tribune

Not limiting itself to Minnesota, NOM now has 17,764 signatures on the pledge (up from 14,714 on the 28th) and the Fortune 500 company is no doubt seriously regretting its decision to pander to same-sex marriage activists and support that radical social agenda. These true marriage defenders have sworn to ‘look for alternatives’ to the General Mills products, whenever convenient and economically feasible (families are hurting in this Obamaconomy). And although more than 80,000 have signed a petition thanking General Mills for their position, it is strongly suspected that some of those signers are not traditional families anyway, and are not really the food company’s target market.

And the campaign is growing daily. With more and more businesses pledging their endorsement of immorality, NOM has an ever increasing opportunity to stand for righteousness. In fact, just today NOM has been apprised of an opportunity that cannot be missed. Finally, NOM has irrefutable evidence that Microsoft’s profits fund the radical redefinition of marriage. (Seattle Times)

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer and co-founder Bill Gates have each donated $100,000 to the campaign supporting the state’s new gay marriage law, which faces a referendum vote in November.

Zach Silk, campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage, said Monday that the checks were cut Friday and are being reported to the state Public Disclosure Commission on Monday afternoon.

“It’s going to make a tremendous difference,” Silk said. “It’s very important for us to have that broad support from business leaders and companies themselves.”

We are confident that NOM will soon announce a full-on boycott of all of Microsoft’s products. But they will not be reactionary – recognizing that Apple gave money to oppose Proposition 8, NOM will boldly stand against these both of these two empires of evil and cease using any products or software from either of these companies.

Perhaps as early as today. Or tomorrow. Or maybe next week (strategery takes time), next month, or the second Tuesday in August of 2028. But definitely sometime very very soon they will stand up and show Microsoft and Apple just what happens when you dare to stand against those who fight for marriage, family, and blind obedience to Catholic teaching.

Thanks, NOM, for the corporate support

I knew it would happen.

Last week, the National Organization for Marriage (but not yours) sent out a vaguely threatening letter to the 50 largest corporations in Minnesota demanding that they “stay neutral” on the upcoming vote to constitutionally ban their employees from being treated equally. And if there is one thing which is now pretty much guaranteed to generate corporate support for marriage equality, it’s telling them that they can’t.

Among the largest corporations headquarted in Minnesota are United Healthgroup, Target, Best Buy, Supervalu, 3M, U.S. Bancorp, Medtronic, and General Mills. So you know that it was going to be no time at all before someone on this list – if not all of them – said, “What’s that? Gay marriage? Oh, yeah, we support that.”

General Mills (makers of cheerios) was the first. (StarTrib)

Chief executive Ken Powell voiced the company’s opposition [to the anti-marriage amendment] Wednesday at a General Mills function attended by 400 gay and lesbian professionals, followed Thursday by a Web letter from the company’s vice president for global diversity and inclusion, Ken Charles.

“We do not believe the proposed constitutional amendment is in the best interests of our employees or our state economy,” Charles wrote. “We value diversity. We value inclusion.”

(And, while he was at it, he thought he’d mention how proud he was to testify in favor of ENDA)

Target hasn’t yet taken an official stance on the amendment, but they featured a gay themed t-shirt line on their website and donated the proceeds ($120,000) to Family Equality Council which supports, well, family equality.

So now I’m stuck. I’m going to have to buy breakfast cereal, and I don’t even eat breakfast cereal.

I wonder… can I pick up Cheerios at Target while I’m on my way to JCPenney to buy Levis?

Brian Brown Accepts

From the NOM Blog:

Dan — I accept and will look forward to debating you at your dining room table. As I said in my challenge to you, anytime, any place.

While I appreciate the invitation that you have extended to my wife, she will not be able to attend. She is a full-time mom with seven beautiful children and an eighth on the way.

Dan Savage invited National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown to a debate at Dan Savage’s dining table, with the New York Times’s Mark Oppenheimer serving as moderator. The original invitation included having Brown’s wife and Dan’s husband also at the table. A date and time will be announced later, giving Savage time to redecorate his living room and dining room for the occasion.

This, I Did Not Expect

A couple years ago, before I was blogging at Box Turtle, a man showed up at a National Organization for Marriage rally, carrying this sign:

In a decidedly emotional reaction, I redesigned NOM’s logo to reflect the sentiment:

I expected some controversy, and when my head settled I offered a more considered analysis of the situation (though NOM’s later dishonesty relieved my fear that I’d treated them unfairly).

However, I discovered something today that I did not expect: An antigay Facebook page has taken the image for its cover photo:

Click to enlarge

Facebook will probably kill the page, but you can see a screen grab of it here.

Let me issue the usual caveats:

• You can’t judge our opponents by a few of their fringe members (the source of my misgivings about my own graphic, which I explored in the more considered evaluation linked to above)
• The page itself may be nothing more than a nasty and stupid joke.
• And in any case, it’s a tiny group — barely more than 40 people who work with, go to school with, or live next to gays and want to kill them.

Even so, this development stunned me. You really can’t parody some of these folks. I know that, but being confronted with it still astonishes me.

And in case you’re wondering, I won’t demand that they stop using my image. If I can help them damage their cause — help expose them as a group of murderous bigots with whom no decent person would associate — then I say huzzah!

Dan Savage Proposes Venue for His Debate with NOM’s Brian Brown

Earlier this month, the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown, in a fundraising letter and blog post, challenged Dan Savage to a debate:

Let me lay down a public challenge to Dan Savage right here and now: You want to savage the Bible? Christian morality? Traditional marriage? Pope Benedict? I’m here, you name the time and the place and let’s see what a big man you are in a debate with someone who can talk back. It’s easy to make high-school girls cry by picking on them. Let’s pick on someone our own size!

Savage quickly picked up the challenge, saying he will name the time and place. In yesterday’s Savage Love podcast, Savage named the place:

Where? My dining room table. Place? Seattle, Washington. Here’s the deal. We can fill a room with my screaming partisans and your screaming partisans and we’ll both play to our respective peanut galleries and I think both of us have a little bit of grandstander in our souls and we will work that and I think that will create more heat than light.

And so what I’d like to do is challenge you to come to my house for dinner. Bring the wife. My husband will be there. and I will hire a video crew and we will videotape sort of an after dinner debate. The trick here is you have to acknowledge my humanity by accepting my hospitality and I have to acknowledge yours by extending my hospitality to you. And I’m willing to do that.

The New York Times’s Mark Oppenheimer will moderate the debate. amd the unedited video tape will be posted online. Brian Brown has yet to accept the response to his original anytime/anyplace challenge.

Well, This Will Be Fun

Dan Savage has accepted NOM’s Brian Brown challenge to a debate to the death. It’s Orville Redenbacher time.

Email of the Day

Oops. Not him this time.

Right now we’re under relentless attacks—that are draining us of critical resources that could be deployed in states and at the federal level to directly affect the future of marriage…. . . and these bullies think they can get away with it!

Friend, I know in my heart that they are wrong. They can’t get away with it, because you and those like you all across the country have stepped up time and time again.

But I urgently need you to stand with us today. So far, we have raised just $29,672 in this campaign. In order to respond to these latest attacks and continue to be effective throughout 2012, we NEED to reach our goal of $200,000 over the next several days. I know that a few of you reading this message can afford a gift of $5,000 or even $10,000 or more. If that is you, please consider what you can do to help at this pivotal moment.
But we’re all on the hook, responsible for how we use whatever resources we have.

If we stand united, we cannot be stopped. But if we don’t, our opponents will silence us one at a time until there is no one left to speak for marriage. So whether it’s $20 or $20,000, it’s important that we stand together in this battle.

Oh wait, that conspiratorial email didn’t come from Eugene Delgaudio. It’s from National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown. Lately I’ve been having trouble telling them apart.