Means and Ends, and Mean Ends: Ford and It's Not Gay
 

December 12 2005
Counterbias.com
Mel Seesholtz
 

Niccolo Machiavelli wrote of ends justifying means. He did so in the service of corrupt governments and leaders. He was strongly influenced by a prince of the Papal States, Cesare Borgia, whose father was Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Pope Alexander VI. Rodrigo’s parents were Jofre Lancol and Isabella Borja, sister of Cardinal Alfonso Borja, later Pope Callixtus III. The Borgias and their counselors were a sort of Nefarious Family Association, replete with corrupt political, social and cultural objectives.

The prince of boycotts Rev. Don Wildmon and his American Family Association have been chirping about their so-called “cultural” victory over Ford Motor Company.

In May 2005, AFA began its attack on Ford for what it deemed the company’s egregious policies: supporting efforts to increase gay and lesbian diversity in the workplace, supporting events and organizations that promote civil equality, and supporting gay and lesbian media through advertising. AFA’s planned boycott of the company was suspended until December 1, 2005, when Wildmon announced the campaign was being called off because victory had been achieved.

Ford deferred to AFA in making the announcement, saying only the company had no disagreement with Wildmon’s statement.

Initially Ford spokesman Mike Moran confirmed to Advocate.com that “the company would no longer advertise Jaguar and Land Rover products in the gay media, saying that the decision was strictly ‘business.’” However, “a recognized authority in the advertising industry, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told 365Gay.com that the decision to end advertising in the gay media was made ‘at the highest level’ and was in reaction to the AFA threat.”

As more and more details of the deal began to emerge so did some other interesting things about Ford and the American Family Association. From a December 7, 2005 posting on AmericaBlog that quoted from industry publication WardsAuto.com:

For days Ford has been saying this is just about a few ads. For days Ford has been saying they didn’t agree to anything. And for days Ford has been saying Volvo will continue marketing to the gay community.

 

Not true.

 

We now find out that Ford has agreed to stop supporting gay events. We now find out that Ford’s Volvo ads will continue in gay publications, but the ads will no longer target the gay community – meaning, they’ll use generic ads that they’re using elsewhere.

From WardsAuto.com:

Ford Motor Co.’s decision to cease advertising in gay publications for its Jaguar and Land Rover luxury brands is part of a truce between the auto maker and the American Family Assn. (AFA) to avert a threatened boycott by the right-wing Christian conservative group, Ward’s learns....

 

In addition, Ford has agreed not to sponsor any future gay and lesbian events but will continue to maintain its employee policies, such as same-sex partner benefits.

The AmericaBlog commentator drew the obvious conclusion: “if Ford is stating that it’s not revoking its benefits [for same-sex partners], then it sounds like the religious right wanted them to.”

A December 7, 2005 article by Barbara McClellan for WardsAuto.com asked the fundamental question “At what point should Big Business draw the line at tolerating the intolerant?” She also documented that “In a Nov. 29 meeting at AFA headquarters in Tupelo, MS, David Leitch, general counsel and vice president for Ford, and Ziad Ojakli, group vice president-corporate affairs, along with Dallas-area Ford dealer Jerry Reynolds, hammered out a deal.”

An item on The Huffington Post clarified: “So, Ford embraces anti-gay bigotry. And the two Ford execs who negotiated the anti-gay secret deal with the gay-hating extremist groups, Ziad Ojakli and David Leitch, are actually former top officials in the Bush White House.”

A later Huffington Post article elaborated: “a former Bush staffer and major GOP donor named Ziad Ojakli, who was also the Senate liaison for the Bush-Cheney Transition Team, as well as a legislative assistant to Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN), one of the Senate’s most rightwing members; and David Leitch, a former deputy general counsel to President George W. Bush, and currently the general counsel at Ford.”

The Washington Blade confirmed:

Both Leitch and Ojakli have connections to the Bush administration. According to biographies of the men on Ford’s website, Leitch joined the company in April following a stint as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush. Leitch “advised the president on a variety of legal issues, including issues involving the war on terror, judicial nominations and ethics,” the biography states. Ojakli joined Ford in 2004 after a four-year stint as principal deputy for legislative affairs for Bush. He is credited with assisting in strategy and policy development.

The Huffington Post posed the obvious question: “Putting aside the question of who [these] Ford employee[s] actually work for, Ford or the White House, is anyone seeing a larger pattern here?”

Some who read the postings did indeed see a “larger pattern”:

It really makes sense that officials from a failing administration now contribute to the woes of a failing company. If that’s the case then everyone who cares for democracy should boycott any car made by Ford. Let them design and design and sell their cars to Bush supporters and bigots…probably one and the same thing.

Some commented with humor: “What I want to know is, when is the radical right going to boycott General Motors for manufacturing a vehicle with such a filthy name. Hummer?!!?!?!? That’s a sin!”

Some commented with poignancy: “The hell with the AFA! They’re only hurting the US economy with their hypocritical bans.  Anyway, I decided to celebrate Happy Hondadays and bought a new Civic. I wonder if the … cretins will trip over themselves trying to get Honda to stop advertising ‘Happy Hondadays’ and fall in line with the other spineless companies.”

That Ford is in trouble is not news. But the trouble they’re in is deeper than previously thought. Earlier reports said the company planned to shut down a few North American plants that employed approximately 7,000 workers. But according to CNNmoney.com,

Ford Motor Co. plans to close at least 10 plants and cut 25,000 to 30,000 hourly jobs in North America within five years, according to a published report Wednesday. The Detroit News, quoting people familiar with the plan, said the deep cuts will be presented to the Ford board of directors for consideration Wednesday. It will not be revealed to the public until Jan. 23, according to the paper. The cuts are much deeper than earlier reports, which initially had Ford closing as few as three assembly plants and cutting only about 7,000 positions.

Apparently the supposedly “pro-family” AFA religious extremists saw a wounded animal and decided the time was right to strike. Leave it to the ideologues of the Christian Right to “kick a guy when he’s down.” Their motivation for doing so seems clear: disenfranchise, demean and hurt gay and lesbian Americans, their children and their families.

Spokesmen for the American Family Association are constantly yammering about “values” and “morals,” but apparently their definitions of those concepts do not include “honesty” when it comes to gay and lesbian Americans.

Wayne Besen is the author of Anything but Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth. He’s demanding

that the antigay group American Family Association stop promoting and selling a video  featuring a man who claims he has been “cured” of  homosexuality who has since been dumped as a spokesman for the group for continuing to have sex with men. The video, It’s Not Gay, features Michael Johnston, who once said he had been “cured” his homosexuality through the “power of Jesus Christ.” Johnston, who is HIV-positive, stopped serving as a spokesman for so-called ex-gay groups in 2003 after reportedly continuing to meet men through the Internet and having unsafe sex with them.

Mr. Besen didn’t mince words: “The American Family Association is blatantly committing fraud by suggesting that Johnston is heterosexual, and they are promoting the spread of HIV by continuing to use him as a spokesperson. … This episode suggests a stunning lack of integrity on the part of the American Family Association and utter contempt for the truth. If they have a shred of decency and morality, they will immediately stop selling the tape and apologize for their disgraceful behavior.”

AFA produced the It’s Not Gay video in 2000 and has been distributing it ever since: that’s two years and counting after the Michael Johnston “miracle” was exposed as a fraud.

According to their PR, AFA claims the video has “been shown in over 10,000 churches.” But Wildmon claims it’s appropriate in other settings as well: “It fits the time period for Sunday School class use or a short Bible study or even a mid-week worship service.” AFA claims “the video’s content is suitable for adults and older youth.” Lies presented as truth in churches and Bible study groups: a perfect fit.

As of this writing, the AFA “store” still features the following promo:

It's Not Gay

SKU: V04 

 

It’s Not Gay presents a story that few have heard, allowing former homosexuals the opportunity to tell their own story in their own words. Along with medical and mental health experts, these individuals express a clear warning that the sanitized version of homosexuality being presented to students is not the whole truth. Uncompromising, yet compassionate, It’s Not Gay is a fair and balanced approach to this challenging subject.

 

Runtime is 28 minutes.

Suggested Donation: $15.00

Available now on DVD!

The italicized “Available now on DVD!” attests to AFA’s continued, updated and enthusiastic shilling of a what can only be called “a lie.” And what’s their motivation for doing so? To disenfranchise, demean and hurt gays, lesbians, their children and their families. The AFA record supports that assertion.

“Disenfranchise, demean and hurt.” Surely the leaders of the Christian Right – or at least their advisors – are smart enough to realize their vitriolic antigay rhetoric and accompanying actions have other consequences. Or perhaps those consequences are just part of the master plan.

John D. Moore is the author of Confusing Love With Obsession: When You Can’t Stop Controlling Your Partner and the Relationship and professor of health sciences and psychology at American Public University. On March 8, 2004, Advocate.com featured an article by Dr. Moore that addressed the effects of antigay rhetoric and campaigns on young people.

When President George W. Bush decided to publicly embrace a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, cloaking his remarks in the guise of religion, he psychologically violated millions upon millions of gay and lesbian youth around the nation as well as the many millions more who are their parents and relatives. In short, Mr. Bush has made it fashionable to declare “open season” on a segment of our society. Make no mistake – his intolerant message was quite clear: “You and your family are not part of the American family.” …

 

Consider what one 20-year-old student wrote in an essay about this topic in a class I instruct on gender psychology: “I have beaten up faggots before, and I used to feel guilty – not anymore! Bush says fags don’t count, so I guess it’s cool to do it.”

Bob Hague’s article is entitled “Voicemail message suggests ‘open season’ on gays”:

State Senator Dave Hansen says he’s disturbed by a message calling for “an open season” on gays, on the eve of the debate over same sex marriage. The suggestion came at the end of a crude and offensive voicemail left with Hansen’s Madison [Wisconsin] office. “Maybe we should have open season on those people, and just let ‘em know how we really think,” the caller said… AUDIO (Voicemail message from Senator Hansen’s office)

Is that the point? Is that the goal? Is that the end justified by the means the Christian Right employs? “Open season” on gays and lesbians? One Huffington Post respondent was poignantly sardonic:

Posted by: kay on December 06, 2005 at 06:13pm

It was simply a smart business decision. You see, Ford understands that Xians will soon take over, will abolish the constitution and start executing gays by stoning them to death at the gates of the city. Marketing to the “soon to be dead” would have been a huge waste of advertising dollars. So it’s a good move on Ford’s part. 

When Rev. Don Wildmon and the American Family Association launch one of their boycotts, what are they really trying to accomplish? When Rev. Lou Sheldon and the Traditional Values Coalition rant and rave against gays and lesbians, what are they really saying and what are their motives for saying it? When Focus on the Family founder and chairman James Dobson writes a book claiming that if civil marriage were extended to gays and lesbians, “The culture war will be over, and the world may soon become ‘as it was in the days of Noah’,” what’s he saying and what’s he advocating?

It would certainly seem that they’re all saying it’s open season on gays and lesbians, their children and their families. What Wildmon, Sheldon, Dobson, and the other leaders of the Christian Right say and do are “Christian” only as “Christian” was defined by the Holy Inquisition in the Dark Ages.

Their perverted medieval thinking scares even some believers. A reader made the observation and posed the question:

After watching a Tom Brokaw special on the growth of Evangelicals and their huge churches, I am rather appalled that their “love” for humanity does not include homosexuals, people that get abortions or gay and lesbian couples who want to marry! How can people believe in such a narrow minded, limited God? Are they really growing as powerful as they were pictured?

The Right Reverend John Shelby Spong’s answer was more than insightful:

I think that we have in recent years entered a “New Dark Age” in the Western world. It is marked by the rise of religious systems that seek to build security by encouraging prejudice against a designated victim. Both evangelical fundamentalism and the kind of ultra-conservative Roman Catholicism that is at present installed in the Vatican are publicly defined by their visceral and uninformed hostility toward homosexual persons. What the heretic was in the Middle Ages, the black in the days of slavery and segregation, and the Jew in Nazi Germany, the homosexual has become in the religious hysteria of our day.

The ends the politicized evangelical Christian Right desire are history’s dead ends. Their means reflect their own malignant character.