Ford's Institutionalized Homophobia

Advocate.com

The antigay American Family Association claimed a cultural victory on Thursday and called off its threatened boycott of Ford Motor Co. On Friday, Ford spokesman Mike Moran confirmed to Advocate.com that the company will stop advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in gay publications but insisted it was strictly a business decision.

The Dearborn, Mich., automaker came under fire from the AFA in May for its longtime efforts to increase LGBT workplace diversity and support gay rights causes. Ford has long been a regular advertiser within gay media, including The Advocate, and has donated significant sums to LGBT causes and nonprofit groups such as the Human Rights Campaign.

Threatened with a boycott by the Mississippi-based AFA, Ford and some of its dealers agreed to negotiate, and the AFA announced in June that it would hold off on its planned action. On Thursday, AFA announced the boycott would be canceled altogether.

"They've heard our concerns; they are acting on our concerns. We are pleased with where we are," said Donald Wildmon, AFA’s chairman, in a statement. "Obviously there are still some small matters of difference, as people will always have, but generally speaking, we are pleased with the results—and therefore the boycott that had been suspended [is] now officially ended."

One of these days, separations between people for stupid reasons like sexual preference or race or religion will be one of those small matters of difference, Mr. Wildmon. But as long as your merry band of wingnuts feel the need to blame someone for their children being gay, we're going to have to deal with it.

How they pulled it off: Ford has dialogues with every interest group they feel they need to. They've been talking to AFA off and on for some time.

These talks weren't going anywhere. So AFA started a boycott and a website. They documented contributions and support of gay pride events. They even got documentation of managers having to attend diversity training.

But suddenly a group of dealers contacted them and became go-betweens in the discussions:

The AFA founder says in a press release that those dealers played a key role in the process. "The dealers were very helpful in bridging a gap and opening up a line of communication between AFA and Ford," he states. "The dealers are basically our kind of people who share many of our concerns."

Which is exactly where all of AFA's documentation had to come from - some disgruntled employees who were hacked off at having to put up with gay people.

Not all divisions and brands of Ford's line advertise in gay media. According to the article, Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury never used gay media. Of the three that did, only Volvo will continue their ads, because they remain "effective". Jaguar and Land Rover will cease ads. We have only Ford's word that it was the ineffectiveness of those ads that led to their becoming a sop to the fundies.

Another demand of Wildmon's group is that Ford stop contributions to gay pride events, etc. Ford has declined comment on whether that's going to happen.

So that's where it ends, right? The gay-hating employees are happy. The gay-hating AFA is happy enough. And now Ford's doing damage control on the gay market.

Not if John Aravosis has anything to do with it. He blogs AmericaBlog.com, and he's up in arms. He just posted the history of Henry Ford's enormity of anti-Semitism on the main page there, and he's taking names and telephone numbers. He's already organized successful campaigns against Dr. Laura and Microsoft. Somewhere there's going to be a gay employee of Ford Motor Company that lets the corporate directory slip to John, and then all hell's going to break loose.

Meanwhile, buy Volvo.