The Religious Right and its slimy tentacles have been lashing out at enemies of its reactionary agenda this week, and the long arm of society has handily bitch-slapped back harder.
Earlier in the week, the hate group One Million Moms, an arm of the American Family Association, threatened a boycott of major department stores Macy’s and JCPenney—the former for including a (barely perceptible) wedding topper with two grooms in an ad, and the latter for hiring Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson.
Also this week, The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation bowed to pressure from anti-choice groups and announced it would cut off funding for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. While Komen claimed it did so because PPFA was “under investigation,” many pundits say the move was politically motivated, seeing as congressional Republicans are currently on a witchhunt against Planned Parenthood.
Well, both of those campaigns have failed spectacularly.
In an email statement to Yahoo! Sh
ine, a spokesperson for Penney says the company “stands behind its partnership with Ellen DeGeneres.”
And just today Komen, with pink-hued egg on its face after a massive backlash, reversed its planned defunding of Planned Parenthood. The breast-cancer org even said sorry on Twitter: “We want to apologize for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”
With the GOP always equating PPFA with abortions, you can sometimes forget that most of what it provides are mammograms and routine reproductive-health screenings. Well, maybe not—social media platforms like Facebook were awash with criticisms against Komen for its cowardly move. And donations at Planned Parenthood skyrocketed after the budget cuts were announced. Komen, one of the nation’s largest cancer nonprofits, may never recover from this embarrassing misstep.
So we may have reached a tipping point, where average Americans—and the companies that cater to them—have had enough with the threats and intimidation from right-wing groups. If the Planned Parenthood fiasco is any indication, their campaign is actually working for us.
So keep them boycotts coming, idiots—you’re only helping the cause!
Cam
“”And just today Komen, with pink-hued egg on its face after a massive backlash, reversed its planned defunding of Planned Parenthood.””
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Unfortunately, they did NOT reverse their decision. They released a statement that said they would continue to honor the commitments they already had made…which legally they had to anyway. And the only thing they said is that PP COULD apply for grants in the future, but during an interview one of their higher ups said that that in no way says that PP would GET any future grants.
They are hoping that the phony statement will take the spotlight off them so they can pull their money from PP quietly.
DavyJones
@Cam: I think that’s a bit unfair, Komen has done great work for women in the past, and I fully believe their rational for pulling funding was a direct relation to the fact that PPFA was under investigation, and I think we can in good faith accept that they’ve now altered their policy to prevent political investigations from disrupting future funding. Per their statement (as quoted in the NYT):
“We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood,” the statement said. “They were not. Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”
I don’t think it’s fair to jump to the assumption that they will pull further funding under the shroud of darkness, it’s not as though Komen has worked a particular agenda towards abortion in the past.
sandy
@DayvyJones I do think they have a political agenda. Out of 2000 groups they funded, they only cut ONE , Planned Parenthood. The founder, Nancy Brinker is a republican & she recently hired as vice president Karen Handel a conservative Republican who ran for Governor on a very anti abortion platform & in a written statement said she did not support Planned Parenthood. Coincidentally as soon as she’s there, they decide to not fund PP, I don’t think so. Plus if you look in detail, they cut 12 million dollars in funding for embryonic stem cell research. This points to very much an anti abortion agenda.
Daez
@sandy: The organization is allowed to have an anti-abortion agenda. That does not mean that they are not doing good work.
Also, Planned Parenthood is under federal investigation to pull its 501C status. If that happens, all donations to Planned Parenthood are no longer tax deductible. That muddies the waters when it comes to funding from other organizations.
Maybe if Planned Parenthood wants to get support from larger organizations and the public because they do more health screening than everything else than they should tell women that do not have their lives in jeopardy and/or do not have pregnancies resulting from rape/incest that they can get their abortions elsewhere or not at all.
Also, I am sick and tired of people believing everyone in the gay community has to support the “right” for a woman to kill their unborn baby simply because they failed to act responsibly in the first place. You want a right to chose, then chose to use protection and not sleep around.
KyleW
If this is Queerty’s idea of failing spectacularly, I think that you need to look up the word “superlative” then stop using them.
Caliban
@DavyJones: That’s not backed up by the evidence. Rather than Planned Parenthood accidentally getting caught up in new rule (oopsie!), people involved in the process say the new rule was specifically DESIGNED to exclude Planned Parenthood. Ari Fleischer, George W Bush’s press secretary and long-time opponent of Planned Parenthood, was brought on board to “handle” Komen’s relationship with PP and he was instrumental in the hiring of Karen Handel, a staunch anti-choice activist who ran for Governor of Georgia but lost.
Obviously Komen can hire who they want and establish or dissolve relationships with whatever groups they want, but they have to answer to their donors and supporters for those decisions. And when’s the last time you heard of a Republican talking about women’s health issues? Probably never, since the GOP’s idea of “women’s issues” is debating whether or not a woman should be forced to carry a child generated by rape. They’re too busy working to DEFEAT any attempts to make health care available to those who are currently uninsured to get sidetracked by actual disease. While INDIVIDUAL Republicans may be involved in women’s health issues like breast cancer, as a party it’s just not on their political map, so Komen’s constituency is more likely to be Democrats and politically moderate if not liberal. Otherwise this wouldn’t have blown up in Komen’s face like it has.
Nancy
@DavyJones: I don’t buy their statement that they pulled funding from PP due to a brand new rule that says they don’t donate to anyone under investigation….since they donated 7.5 million to Penn State which is currently under federal investigation (the investigation against PP is a witch hunt with no basis, started by a hardcore right wing representative). SGK backed off that statement and then said that they didn’t want to fund “pass through” care. When it became obvious that no one was buying that line either, they reversed their decision. It’s all political and it backfired on them. Komen has lost sight of what charity means, as evidenced by their rabid pursuit and suing of any fundraiser using the phrase “for the cure” or “for a cure” or using pink ribbons. Seriously, they even went after a tiny family run event called Kites for a Cure that just wanted to raise money for lung cancer research. SGK has seen my last dollar – I’ll never donate again or buy anything with a pink ribbon on it, whether it’s a can of soup or a box of cereal. My dollars will go directly to Planned Parenthood.
Cam
href=”#comment-559077″>DavyJones: said….
“”@Cam: I think that’s a bit unfair, Komen has done great work for women in the past, and I fully believe their rational for pulling funding was a direct relation to the fact that PPFA was under investigation, and I think we can in good faith accept that they’ve now altered their policy to prevent political investigations from disrupting future funding. Per their statement (as quoted in the NYT):””
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No, actually that is a flat out lie from them. They still associate with about 5 other organizations that are under investigation INCLUDING criminal including partnering with Bank of America, which is under investigation and other organizations under investigation for not reporting criminal sexual assault etc..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/[email protected]<a
So this is just a lie to try to take the spotlight off them.
TASTEY GOODIES
Komen needs 2 stick 2 raising awareness, money, and a search for a cure. Not all this political BS.
Cam
One Million Moms just did what millions of dollars in ad spending couldn’t do…made JC Pennys cool.
All over facebook gays and friends of gays are saying their going to go there to buy things. Their CEO must be sending Million Moms a huge thank you card.
Bush Twins
Good point. Me and my sister gonna shop there more.
B
Exactly how many members (moms or not) does “One Million Moms” have? For all we know, the organization might be just two guys with a post office box masquerading as a suite.
B
Some info on OneMillionMoms.com – the result of a “whois” search:
Registrant:
American Family Association
PO Drawer 2440
Tupelo, Mississippi 38803
United States
Registered through: MoreInformation.NET, LLC (An Optimus Partner)
Domain Name: ONEMILLIONMOMS.COM
Created on: 29-Nov-01
Expires on: 29-Nov-12
Last Updated on: 30-Nov-11
Administrative Contact:
Shank, Ron [email protected]
Optimus Media
450 Main Street
Savannah, Tennessee 38372
United States
7319261967 Fax —
Technical Contact:
Shank, Ron [email protected]
Optimus Media
450 Main Street
Savannah, Tennessee 38372
United States
7319261967 Fax —
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.OMHOST.NET
NS2.OMHOST.NET
Don’t bother the contacts listed – they are not associated with either One Million Moms or the American Family Association and most likely get assigned a variety of customer accounts.
It seems that OneMillionMoms does not have its own office and cannot act on its own behalf – otherwise that information would show up in the information about the registrant. It’s web page calls it a “project of the American Family Association”. It links to http://moms411.ning.com/ (which appears to be some sort of social-networking thing) and the “blogs” page ( http://moms411.ning.com/main/authorization/signIn?target=http%3A%2F%2Fmoms411.ning.com%2Fprofiles%2Fblog%2Flist ) indicates that they have something like 2157 “moms” – of either sex. That number is probably the number of people who gave them an email address and password to log in – it is hard to tell as I’m certainly not going to give them mine.
Charles
Komen brings in countless tax free millions….the bigger question is where does the money go? If we donate the money for research, why is the treatment so expensive? It is time to stop giving money to big Charity, Big Mega Churches and ask more questions…..