The controversy over Chick-fil-A’s anti-gay policies has been sidetracked as many focus instead on the narrow question of whether political bluster by city officials condemning the company could infringe on its First Amendment rights. In the meantime, activists across the country are calling out the harm caused by the company’s anti-gay giving and its president’s condemnations of homosexuality. Here’s a round-up of some of the latest pushback:

• Today, the Human Rights Campaign protested in front of the Chick-fil-A truck in downtown Washington, DC.
• The young people of Youth Empowered to Act in Laguna Hills, California protested outside a newly opening Chick-fil-A, informing customers about the company’s anti-gay donations.
• Philadelphia Councilman Jim Kenny has suggested he’ll introduce resolutions officially condemning Chick-fil-A and its president, Dan Cathy.
• Former NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) is calling on others to boycott Chick-fil-A.
• Since Tuesday, students at seven universities have launched Change.org petitions demanding that Chick-fil-A be blocked from their campuses: University of Illinois, University of Kansas, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Ball State University, College of Charleston, Wichita State University, and Minnesota State University.
• Chick-fil-A has also had to publicly deny it was using a fake teenage girl’s profile to defend itself on Facebook.
• Support continues to grow for next week’s planned Chick-fil-A Same-Sex Kiss-in.

Given the growing awareness of Chick-fil-A’s multi-million dollar commitment to demonizing people who are gay, it’s understandable that many feel they can no longer welcome the restaurant in their neighborhoods. If nothing else, the controversy provides an important opportunity to educate about the lives and families of same-sex couples who Dan Cathy believes will destroy society.

Christian-affiliated Jitters & Bliss coffee recently attempted to profit off of  a partnership with the National Organization for Marriage because of the group’s boycott of Starbucks over its support of marriage equality. J&B would offer a special discount to its customers if they used the code word “marriage” and make donations to NOM in exchange for “free” press. J&B’s Facebook page was overwhelmed with negative comments about the partnership as well as countering pro-equality comments, all of which were deleted and the users blocked from the page. Ultimately, the page was removed from public view entirely for several days.

Jitters & Bliss has restored their page, and in comments on the page made clear that its relationship with NOM is officially over after just one week:

USER: is the hate group NOM still associated with this company?

J&B: No!

USER: So it’s not true that if I enter the promotional code “marriage,” you’ll give money to them? Like they say right here? http://www.nomblog.com/24761/

J&B: That is correct! Our customers will receive the discount until the end of July, but no money goes to NOM after July 9th. Our true intention is to sell great coffee. Period! Jitters & Bliss remains neutral, respectiving everyone. However, we are a Christian based company who will adhere to Christian business principles. We love everyone. [...]

USER: is there a pro equality code I can use to order coffee from you?

J&B: we are no longer connected to NOM. I do not care for SBucks for many reasons. I took an opportunity to get some of their business. Being inclusive, and loving everyone, yes, I would make another code. Will you use it?

It’s unclear how the company’s claim of being “inclusive” and “loving everyone” jibes with the “Christian business principles” that prompted the company to partner with NOM in the first place. Still, the failed PR plan shows just how toxic NOM’s anti-gay views are and how dismally unsuccessful their boycott strategy is playing out.

Google has launched a new international initiative called Legalize Love to promote safer conditions for gay and lesbian people in countries with anti-gay laws on the books. Naturally, the American Family Association is now considering a boycott of Google products.

On their radio network, the AFA’s Buster Wilson decried Google’s gay rights campaign, which plans to start its focus in Poland and Singapore before expanding to other countries. Right Wing Watch has the video:

If the AFA thought boycotting Oreos was tough, wait until they start trying to avoid all Google products. As Wilson notes, anti-gay boycotters would need to ditch Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, their Android phones, and the search engine itself. “It’s going to be a hard one for a lot of us,” Wilson concedes, but it will “test the meat of our convictions.”

AFA will certainly need strong convictions because they are quickly running out of acceptable companies. If they plan to boycott Google, they would also have to add Microsoft, Nike, Time Warner Cable, Levi Strauss, CBS, and Xerox to their list — just a handful of pro-gay U.S. corporations. As more and more businesses realize the economic and social benefits of having inclusive pro-LGBT policies, the AFA’s feeble boycotting of Oreo cookies and Google products looks increasingly silly.

– Steven Perlberg

The National Organization for Marriage is still clinging to its “Dump Starbucks” boycott, objecting to the company’s support for marriage equality. Earlier this week, they tried to claim they’d found a “neutral” coffee alternative in Jitters & Bliss, a small coffee company that proceeded to censor pro-equality comments on its Facebook wall. (J&B’s Facebook page has remained inactive since Tuesday.) Even though DumpStarbucks’ momentum plateaued many weeks ago, the anti-gay group continues to boast petition signature numbers on Twitter:

Date	Signatures
July 4, 2012	45,414
June 26, 2012	45,136
June 19, 2012	44,772
June 11, 2012	44,194
June 7, 2012	43,800
June 1, 2012	43,064
May 30, 2012	41, 908
May 25, 2012	39,982
May 17, 2012	39,268
May 14, 2012	38,057
May 7, 2012	35,858

Compare these numbers to the 640,000 people who thanked Starbucks in a counter-campaign back at the beginning of April. Even though the “Thank You Starbucks” campaign essentially ended then, the numbers still climbed to over 650,000. And Starbucks’ stock has only benefited from its support of marriage, reaching its highest value ever during the height of NOM’s boycott in late March and April.

NOM is now applying this same failed strategy to General Mills. A week after NOM launched “Dump General Mills,” the food company boosted its dividend by 8 percent. Its stock remains unfazed by the week of protests.

The strategy of boycotting pro-equality companies seems an odd choice for NOM. They complain when LGBT groups threaten to protest anti-equality businesses, claiming victimhood and religious oppression, yet seem to have no problem employing the same tactic. They are obviously inconsistent — and thus devoid of integrity — in regards to their targets, ignoring companies like Microsoft, Google, and Nike whose products aren’t pourable. And this notion that they side with “neutral” businesses is a blatant farce, because any company that agrees to treat the LGBT community as invisible or unwelcome is anything but “neutral.”

For as large as NOM has grown in the mere five years of its existence, it’s compelling that they would now invest so heavily in doomed campaigns in a desperate attempt for media relevance. These failed boycotts exemplify how out of touch NOM is with the swift national momentum toward equality and justice for same-sex couples and their families.

ABC News may have invented the Kraft Foods boycott over the Pride Month Oreo, but One Millions Moms’ inevitable response doesn’t exactly change the story from fiction to fact. The hate-group affiliated organization lashed out at Kraft Foods today over the rainbow cookie posted on Facebook, urging supporters to write the company that they are “highly offended” that Oreos would claim to “Proudly support love!”

What’s telling is that though the response insinuates a boycott — “There are plenty of cookies on the market for moms to buy for their families that do not support liberal causes. We have a choice.” — it stops short of even using the word. Perhaps OMM knows that Kraft products are so ubiquitous that its already unsuccessful protest efforts would have substantial trouble gaining steam. It’s much easier to convince social conservatives to submit a form email than to empty out half their pantries.

It’s worth noting that the group conceded that having a “neutral” position on LGBT issues is, in effect, the same as having their anti-LGBT position:

One Million Moms will continue to support companies in the future with full understanding where they stand on principles and morality. We will choose to stay away from those who do not support moral decency.

Kraft needs to hear from you. Supporting the homosexual agenda verses remaining neutral in the cultural war is just bad business. If Christians cannot find corporate neutrality with Kraft then they will vote with their pocketbook and support companies that are neutral. Send your email letter to Oreo (Kraft Foods) now!

It’s true: “remaining neutral” and “standing on [conservative] principles and morality” are the same. Choosing not to recognize the diversity of the LGBT community is to help maintain its invisibility and exclusion from society. The Oreo ad didn’t testify before Congress, file an amicus brief, or take a position on a ballot initiative as many companies have — it merely recognized a community and its culture. For OMM, that alone was enough to “disrespect millions of American families by supporting the homosexual agenda.”

Oreo boasts that it is “America’s Favorite Cookie,” and it proved this week that it is a cookie for all Americans. OMM’s ideal version of the country is one where LGBT don’t even exist.

All week, anti-gay activists are “dumping General Mills” outside the company’s headquarters in Minnesota to protest its opposition to the state’s marriage inequality amendment. The protests have been dismal, with only two or three dozen people bothering to show up — even less without counting  their children. Jeremy Hooper points out now that the Minnesota for Marriage protesters are pretending to be victims as an excuse for their small numbers. Andy Parrish, Deputy Campaign Manager for the anti-equality coalition, tweeted the following today:

@generalmills VP and Head of Security’s presence at our rally to intimidate their employees from joining us ‪#stribpol‬ pic.twitter.com/FCGs9aeM

It’s unclear from this random picture who the vice president and head of security are or what it is they are doing to “intimidate” anybody. Perhaps they are sitting on the bench — how very off-putting. A legitimate group of corporate protesters would be grateful for the access and opportunity to engage with individuals in leadership positions, but apparently not Minnesota for Marriage.

Further, General Mills employees have actually taken very good care of their dissenters, offering the best in Midwestern hospitality:

Employees of General Mills responded to protesters by offering them coffee or ice water with slices of lemon. There would have been cookies too, except the protesters said they’d accept them only to add to the smattering of ‘dumped’ food they had collected. “It’s the neighborly thing to do,” Tom Forsythe spokesman for General Mills explained the unexpected hospitality. “I was raised as a Minnesotan, and when people drop by your house, you put on coffee, so that’s what we did.”

This is how the anti-gay movement works. They attempt to intimidate a company, and then claim that they are the ones being intimidated because they didn’t want cookies. It doesn’t get much pettier.

Though an individual can choose to boycott a product, a boycott is, by definition, only effective if organized on a large scale. ABC News chose to ignore this distinction when it reported yesterday, “Oreo Pride: Rainbow-Stuffed Cookie Sparks Boycott.” The article highlighted the rainbow Oreo posted on Facebook this week, which was accompanied by the message, “Proudly support love!” Though the innocuously inclusive message has largely been praised, ABC News drew its conclusions solely from some negative comments posted on Facebook:

But while many of the comments were supportive, some Facebook users pledged to boycott the cookie because of the post.

“I’ll never buy Oreo again,” one commenter wrote.

“Disgusted with oreos,” wrote another. “Being gay is an abmonitation in GOd’s eyes i wont be buying them anymore.”

If such journalistic conclusions could be drawn from random typo-ridden comments on Internet content, news headlines would instantly lose all integrity. Two Facebook comments do not constitute a boycott, nor would 100 anti-gay comments even warrant calling the posting “controversial.” Culture wars have never merely been about a “difference of opinion.” Controversy is manufactured by such headlines that over-emphasize negative voices and draw false conclusions about their impact.

There are, of course, anti-gay boycotts, but none have been successful. The one-man operation known as the Florida Family Association has generated faux outrage about almost every LGBT-inclusive television program. The American Family Association has been boycotting Home Depot for its support of gay rights for years to no avail. Its subsidiary, One Million Moms, has whiningly railed against JC Penney for featuring Ellen DeGeneres and same-sex couples in advertisements. The National Organization for Marriage has been unsuccessfully “dumping” Starbucks and now General Mills. (Only a few dozen people showed up to protest General Mills yesterday, and the company actually boosted its dividends — thank General Mills here.) If NOM wants to retaliate against Oreos, it’ll have to add all of Kraft foods to its boycott, which would leave conservative kitchens with relatively empty pantries. To truly eschew all pro-LGBT companies, they’d also have to add Google, Microsoft, Nike, Time Warner Cable, Levi Strauss, CBS, and Xerox to their list, to name a few.

Businesses have realized that supporting equality and inclusion is good for their employees, good for their customers, and good for their bottom line, so it’s no surprise that pro-LGBT policies are quickly becoming ubiquitous throughout the corporate world. To try to upset this reality by highlighting a few negative reactions is not only irresponsible, it’s simply incorrect.

Right on cue, the American Family Association’s One Million Moms has expressed outrage at JCPenney’s new Father’s Day advertisement featuring a same-sex couple with their kids. Suggesting the ad is “promoting sin,” OMM attacks the store for “taking sides” instead of remaining “neutral” in the “culture war”:

One Million Moms (OMM) is disturbed that JCPenney’s (JCP) is continuing down the same path of promoting sin in their advertisements. In JCP’s June catalog, there is another homosexual ad, but this time with two dads celebrating Father’s Day. The advertising booklet began arriving in mailboxes yesterday. If their marketing department follows the same plan they did in May, this mailer will be available to view on their website on June 1. [...]

It is obvious that JCP would rather take sides than remain neutral in the culture war. JCP will hear from the other side so they need to hear from us as well. Our persistence will pay off! One day we will answer for our actions or lack of them. We must remain diligent and stand up for Biblical values and truth. Scripture says multiple times that homosexuality is wrong, and God will not tolerate this sinful nature.

OMM previously attempted to boycott JCPenney when the store announced Ellen DeGeneres would be its new spokesperson, but they abandoned that boycott as a failure. There’s nothing to suggest this second effort will be end any differently.

It’s worth noting that OMM’s notion of “neutrality” is complete fiction. Same-sex families are very much a part of our society and our communities. There is nothing neutral about choosing to ignore them. One Million Moms is an anti-gay organization with an anti-gay agenda, and they clearly oppose any business that even dares acknowledge that gay people exist, let alone that they could be welcome customers.