Posts Tagged As: McDonalds

McDonald’s touts it’s “diversity”… with a very noticable exception

Timothy Kincaid

June 15th, 2010

McDonald’s is very proud of its diversity…

They are proud of their “Culture of Inclusion and Diversity“, their minority suppliers, their formal presentations, workshops, seminars teaching how to work with others who are different. Kids can even explore the World of McDonald’s from a number of ethnic perspectives.

But it doesn’t take too long to notice who is missing from this great diversity.

Oh, there is one mention of a “Gays, Lesbians and Ally Network” and they have a solid 85% from HRC’s corporate index. But when McDonald’s says “diversity”, they aren’t thinking about you.

NGLCC severs contact with McDonald’s after deteriorating relationship

Timothy Kincaid

June 15th, 2010


It seems that our observations about McDonald’s and the company’s less-than-supportive “core values” are not without confirmation. After the 2008 AFA boycott, McDonald’s relationship with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce has deteriorated.

Considering a string of broken promises and dismissiveness on the part of the company, the NGLCC sees the French ad as a cynical attempt by McDonald’s to capitalize on a gay-friendly market in Europe while simultaneously pandering to anti-gay attitudes in the United States. They’ve issued a letter severing contact with the burger chain and expressing their frustration:

After numerous conversations and frustratingly unfulfilled promises by Patricia Harris, Vice President and Global Diversity Officer, and Gus Viano, Director of Inclusion & Diversity, to produce and share McDonald’s plan to engage the LGBT segment, we have still seen no plan. As such, we have come to the conclusion that these individuals represent the real position that McDonald’s is not interested in doing business with the LGBT segment or engaging in any substantive dialog.

We strongly believe that McDonald’s plan to distance itself from LGBT and other diverse business segments, coupled with the release of the French TV ad, is ill advised and counter to the spirit of good business and sound ethics. We sincerely hope that McDonald’s will reconsider its position and that the company will again show its support for LGBT people, our families and our businesses — not just where it is politically expedient, but around the globe.

McDonald’s won’t market to gay customers

Timothy Kincaid

June 15th, 2010

Don Wildmon, the American Family Association’s director, will periodically declare war on some company or other (usually for undecipherable reasons), get some coverage at WorldNetDaily, send out some fund letters, declare success! (again for undecipherable reasons) and move on to his next target. Back in 2008 the target was McDonald’s. It seems that McDonald’s contributed to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce which meant, somehow, that the company was “endorsing the homosexual agenda”.

When the company’s employee who was on the board of NGLCC moved out of the country, AFA declared victory.

A corporate executive for McDonald’s restaurants who had been on board of directors of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce has stepped down following a boycott of the chain organized by the pro-family American Family Association.

McDonald’s officials confirmed today to WND that Richard Ellis, who had been named to the “gay” chamber board after McDonald’s contributed $20,000 to the organization, “made a personal decision to step down” after he accepted a new position with McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada.

At the time, I wrote this off as coincidental. But perhaps the AFA had more of an impact on McDonald’s than I thought. Or, as new information suggests, perhaps AFA’s message found a sympathetic ear at McDonald’s.

Now a new issue has arisen to get anti-gays into a dither, and McDonald’s response is disturbing. It involves a McDonald’s advertisement which ran on French television.

This charming ad – part of a larger campaign welcoming everyone to come as they are – is not offensive. It is not sexual or provocative or inappropriate. But to those who oppose the existence of gay people, the idea of welcoming gay youth “as they are” is an indication of an insidious homosexual agenda.

And McDonald’s has made it very clear that such a message will not be part of their US marketing.

Lisa Howards, McDonalds’s director of corporate media relations, told Media Matters that the “Come as You Are” campaign was made exclusively for France.

“The ad you’re referencing is one of a series of ads called “Come as You Are,” which recognized he diversity of McDonald’s customers in France. This particular commercial was produced by McDonald’s France and is running only in France,” Howards said in the statement. “Each of our 117 markets around the world determines their own advertising and marketing.”

Companies like McDonald’s have complicated multi-year advertising strategies that include corporate image, message, and theme and I certainly have no expectation that McDonald’s target-market specifically to the gay community. But there is a difference between less narrow marketing and a strategy that specifically excludes gay customers.

And now Don Thompson, McDonald’s new President and Chief Operating Officer, has made it very clear in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that this ad was a “mistake” and that McDonald’s will not market to gay customers. His religion doesn’t approve of gay people.

Tribune: A French TV ad featuring a gay teen and his father has stirred some controversy — not there, but here. Can you talk about that?

Thompson: It is an example that markets, cultures are very different around the world. (For instance), I’ve never shied away from the fact that I’m a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don’t impose those on anybody else. I’ve been in countries where the majority of the people in the country don’t believe in a deity or they may be atheist. Or the majority of the country is Muslim. Or it may be the majority is much younger skewed. So when you look at all these differences, it’s not that I’m to be the judge or the jury relative to right or wrong. Having said that, at McDonald’s, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations. We’re going to make some mistakes at times. (We talk) about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world. And those are things that, yes, we’re going to learn from. But, you’re right, that commercial won’t show in the United States.

Tribune: How has it done in France?

Thompson: Interestingly enough, there have been no negatives coming out of France. The brand is a local brand and different things will occur in different parts of the world. We just have to make sure that we understand the impact one action may make on another part of the world.

So I guess McDonald’s “core values” do not include marketing to gay youth. Others should come as they are, but there won’t be any marketing to gay people in the United States. In fact, he seems to be saying that there will not be any more marketing to gay people anywhere from now on. It might “have an implication.”

When AFA came calling, Don Thompson was President of McDonald’s USA and there were “things he learned”. I fear that what he learned was that he now has an excuse for implementing his own bigotries and biases. He’s not “imposing on anyone,” he’s just upholding “core values.”

But perhaps McDonald’s has more to learn. Perhaps they need to discover that America’s youth do not share “core values” with the AFA or with Don Thompson.

And McDonald’s certainly doesn’t share “core values” with me.

Frothing Lunacy

Timothy Kincaid

July 28th, 2008

barber.jpgSometimes the anti-gays come out with something so ludicrous, so froth-at-the-mouth insane, so raving lunatic that it’s worthy of Lewis Carroll. Except, of course, they believe themselves… or the less sane among them do.

And one such trader in fantasy is J. Matt “Bam Bam” Barber, formerly the voice of Concerned Women for America. Barber always manages to amuse and, in his critique of McDonalds and the AFA boycott, Barber delivers in spades.

You can almost see the spittle and hear his rapid breathing as he writes:

Unfortunately, the radical San Francisco-style policies both the NGLCC and McDonald’s advocate run directly counter to the best interests of the vast majority of Americans outside California’s “Sodom on the Bay.” For example, under communist-tested, McDonald’s-approved “hate speech” legislation, such as the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Christians and other business owners with traditional values would be forced – under penalty of law – to abandon sincerely held religious beliefs and adopt McDonald’s own secular-humanist, moral-relativist view of right and wrong.

It’s not often that you can get “communist”, “Sodom”, and “McDonalds” in the same paragraph. You’ve got to hand it to him. When it comes to nutbaggery, it just doesn’t get much more bat-poopish than Barber.

Oh but he doesn’t stop there

Yet McDonald’s has now thrown its full weight, brand name and presently tarnished reputation behind the push for “gay marriage” in all 50 states.

All because they contributed a $20,000 pittance to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, an organization that doesn’t even mention marriage in their mission or programs. Ah, but if we were looking for logic and sanity we wouldn’t look to Barber, now would we?

But it is this doozie that I really love. Barber sarcastically proclaims

If you happen to support the historical definition of marriage – which is, and has always been male-female – then you’re a drooling, inbred hatemonger.

Well, Matt… not everyone who supports the historical definition…

Some day the anti-gays may realize that lunatic ranting doesn’t win hearts, minds, or Culture Wars. Let’s hope it’s too late by then. And in the mean time, someone give Bam Bam a word processor.

How Long Can You Believe a Liar?

Timothy Kincaid

July 24th, 2008

One of the reasons that our readers come to Box Turtle Bulletin is because we try very hard to be honest with you. Yes, we have our shared perspectives and our biases, but we try not to put words here that cannot be supported.

Which makes me wonder, why do anti-gay liars get and maintain a readership base? After the first time or two that I found a source to be lying to me, I’d not go back.

Take, for example, this claim from World Net Daily about the AFA McDonalds boycott:

wnd-mcd.bmp

Following a link from the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce’s website leads to a promotional for children’s Happy Meals at the McDonalds website.

Now if I had been told all my life that “homosexuals recruit your children” and that “homosexuals are pedophiles”, this might frighten me. If it were true.

But of course, it isn’t.

The NGLCC corporate link is to www.mcdonalds.com. If you go to that site, click the USA link, scroll over the picture of kids playing, and click a pop-up, you get to the Happy Meal page.

But saying that NGLCC links to the McDonalds corporate website just isn’t frightening enough. So they lie.

Ya know, even if I were a Good Christian trembling in fear of the Homosexual Agenda I would be annoyed at being fed lies. But, then again, I’d probably also be amused to see that the NGLCC also links to Burger King

Most Pathetic Protest Ever

Jim Burroway

July 17th, 2008

The AFA’s McDonalds boycott has started off with a resounding thud. Have you ever seen anything more sad?

AFA To Boycott McDonalds

Jim Burroway

July 3rd, 2008

Ronald McDonaldThe American Family Association is calling for another of their futile boycotts, this time of all McDonalds restaurants.

The AFA claims that McDonalds is giving “the full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage.”

Are they serious? McDonalds is promoting the homosexual agenda? In those shoes?

Having a Cow Over McDonalds

Jim Burroway

April 10th, 2008

Ed Brayton is thinking about starting a weekly award “for the most ridiculously hyperbolic rhetoric I come across.” Ed might want to think daily. Anyway, he thinks that anti-gay rhetoric alone will provide plenty of fodder, although that’s not strictly his beat. He was checking out the personal blog of Rick Pearcey, husband of Nancy Pearcey of the Discovery Institute. That’s where Ed found this little gem:

Not today, in light of reports that McDonald’s has decided, apparently, to declare war on my family. And to declare war on the civilization of liberty, independence, creativity, and humanity under God that my Dad fought for in World War II.

What did McDonald do the “declare war” on liberty, independence, humanity, World War II, and Ricky Pearcey’s family?

Well it turns out he gets his “news” from the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow:

McDonald’s … has given a significant amount of money, I might mention, to become a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce,” Wildmon explains. “Among the many other things that the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce promotes is hate crimes [legislation], the ENDA [Employment Non-Discrimination Act]. [T]hey’re dedicated to pushing the homosexual agenda.”

In exchange for the donation, a McDonald’s senior executive has been placed on the board of the pro-homosexual group. Wildmon says the chain’s decision is baffling

Wildmon is apoplectic, and so is Pearcy. Brayton found this reaction particularly noteworthy:

For human beings, this is a matter of liberty under God — Why help finance groups that turn their backs on the Declaration of Independence, the Founding vision, and the living Creator who holds it all together?

Run for the hills everyone! World War II was all in vain.

    

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