Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz continued to defend his company’s support for marriage equality at a shareholders meeting Wednesday, pointing out that “not every decision is an economic decision.” Shareholder Tom Strobhar suggested that the company’s stock dipped a bit when the National Organization for Marriage launched a “Dump Starbucks” boycott last year, but Schultz expressed no concern about the company’s viability moving forward:

STROBHAR: In the first full quarter after this boycott was announced, our sales and our earnings — shall we say politely — were a bit disappointing.

SCHULTZ:If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38 percent you got last year, it’s a free country. You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much.

Listen to their remarks here.

Even when the NOM’s boycott was making a small dent in the company’s sales, it was still performing better than the rest of the markets. The boycott campaign plateaued after just two months, having been overwhelmed by marriage equality advocates who thanked Starbucks in droves.

Last year, Starbucks encouraged Washington voters to approve the marriage equality referendum and recently joined nearly 300 other companies in filing a brief calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. (HT: Towleroad.)

Nearly 300 companies, along with several law firms and municipalities, have submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Many recognizable companies signed on, including Adobe, Amazon, Apple, CBS, Cisco Systems, Citigroup, eBay, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, JetBlue Airways, The Jim Henson Company, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Mars, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, Pfizer, Planet Fitness, Starbucks, Sun Life Financial, Twitter, Viacom, the Walt Disney Company, and Xerox. They are joined by the cities of Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Providence, San Francisco, and Seattle, among others. One interesting signatory of note is Bain & Company, the management consultant firm that Mitt Romney once worked for — not to be confused with Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital.

The brief argues that DOMA places burdens on companies that impede their ability to recruit and retain productive employees because of the strains on benefits. In many ways, these companies are bound by the law to discriminate against their employees against their wishes, and they often incur financial burdens to simply find ways to navigate around DOMA. These companies make it clear that it violates their business models to comply with DOMA:

DOMA imposes on amici not simply considerable burden of compliance and cost. DOMA conscripts amici to become the face of its mandate that two separate castes of married persons be identified and separately treated. As employers, we must administer employment-related health-care plans, retirement plans, family leave, and COBRA. We must impute the value of spousal health-care benefits to our employees’ detriment. We must treat one employee less favorably, or at minimum differently, when each is as lawfully married as the other. We must do all of this in states, counties, and cities that prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and demand equal treatment of all married individuals. This conscription has harmful consequences. [...]

Our principles are not platitudes. Our mission statements are not simply plaques in the lobby. Statements of principle are our agenda for success: born of experience, tested in laboratory, factory, and office, attuned to competition. Our principles reflect, in the truest sense, our business judgment. By force of law, DOMA rescinds that judgment and directs that we renounce these principles or, worse yet, betray them.

These companies have made it clear that inequality harms not just the families of LGBT people, but American businesses as well. As Joe Jervis suggests, conservatives would have a difficult time boycotting so many ubiquitous companies.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is leading the charge in defending Chick-fil-A with “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” this Wednesday, but with the new media attention, he has proven his hypocrisy over what warrants a boycott. Breaking from his anti-gay partners at the National Organization for Marriage, Huckabee actually disavowed the group’s failed boycotts of Starbucks and General Mills, but with a tenuous explanation:

HUCKABEE: That’s what I find most offensive. Instead of having an honest, rational, intellectually sound discussion about whether the COO of a company should be able to make statements, whether it’s Dan Cathy at Chick-fil-A or Howard Schultz at Starbucks — which I think is fine. If Howard Schultz wants to make statements, that’s fine. Let him do it. I’m not going to go asking for a boycott of Starbucks. This is a marketplace. If Starbucks starts writing on the side of every cup ‘We Don’t Like Christians,” then I’d have to look at it differently. But Starbucks sells coffee. Chick-fil-A sells chicken. The point of view of its senior executives and their founders is frankly their business. I just find this level of trying to destroy people’s jobs and livelihoods because they don’t agree with them — that’s very troubling, and it gets to the very heart of a kind of America that’s very different than the one we grew up with.

For what it’s worth, there aren’t any nationwide Chick-fil-A boycotts actually being called for. But Huckabee’s qualification of what would make him consider a Starbucks boycott demonstrates why he should actually support, or at least respect, the widespread backlash against Chick-fil-A. As he points out, Starbucks didn’t say anything anti-Christian by supporting marriage equality, let alone donate large sums of money to an explicitly anti-Christian organization (not that any such group of any significance even exists in this country).

On the contrary, Chick-fil-A gives millions of dollars annually to groups trying to demonize and eradicate gay people through ex-gay therapy, and its president said that marriage equality supporters are “inviting God’s judgment” by having the “audacity” to advocate for that “twisted up kind of stuff.” That certainly trumps how offensive a message like “We don’t like Christians” would be, but of course, Huckabee is incapable of understanding that because he shares Chick-fil-A’s beliefs. If, however, he’s really concerned about destroying people’s livelihoods, perhaps he should take some time to consider the actual impact of Chick-fil-A’s anti-gay statements and donations.

(HT: Good As You.)

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.

Last week, ThinkProgress identified how the National Organization for Marriage’s boycott of Starbucks has absolutely no momentum and has had no impact on Starbucks’ business. Since then, NOM’s Jonathan Baker countered that the coffee company’s stock has technically declined a bit — from $53.81 to $51.97 — since the launch of the boycott, boasting that the organization’s paltry efforts have been “part of the equation.” But David Badash points out that Baker doesn’t know the first thing about assessing how a company’s stock is performing against the rest of the market:

The DOW is down 3.29% since March 21. The NASDAQ, on which Starbucks is listed, has performed worse: down 4.05%. Starbucks (SBUX) is down less than half of both: 1.34%. So despite Dump Starbucks’ 45,578 people, Starbucks is performing much better than the market. Yes, Starbucks stock has dropped slightly, from $53.81 to last night’s closing of $52.39. A drop of $1.42 is hardly cause for NOM to celebrate.

There is no victory here at all. If anything, NOM’s campaign might be credited for the stock’s surge to $61.67 in April before its leveling out after the media attention dissipated. To try to claim success for such a façade is desperation at its most obvious.

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.

There’s something wrong with a message that requires spin, covering up, and censorship, and the decision by Jitters & Bliss Coffee to step into the National Organization for Marriage’s pathetic Starbucks boycott is exemplary in this regard. Yesterday, NOM gave J&B some free press, promoting the company as a Starbucks alternative that maintains a “neutral corporate position on marriage.” This is, of course, except for partnering with the most vocal and rabid anti-equality organization in the country and trying to profit off their dismal protest. “Neutrality” is code for invisibility and continued oppression of the gay community.

Jitters & Bliss has shown just what a scam NOM is trying to pull under the guise of this “neutrality” through the astounding mismanagement of its Facebook page today. Earlier today, J&B was censoring pro-equality comments, blocking posters who added such comments, and ultimately shut down its page for a period of time. The page rebooted this afternoon with the following message and comment, which have also since been deleted:

In light of Jitters & Bliss Coffee paid advertising on NOM website, our position has not changed. Like many companies we are NEUTRAL on the gay marriage issue. We respect our customers’ diverse views on it as with the many other issues facing our nation today. Yes, we are paying advertising on NOM, and would do so on gay sites too (with a NEUTRAL, inclusive position). Our nation is diverse as is our customer base. “God Bless you, and the USA!”

Please, no posts!

The post was obviously rife with lies. First of all, J&B is clearly doing more than “advertising,” seeking to profit off anti-gay stigma by giving money to NOM to get free publicity in NOM’s own materials. Secondly, the company clearly doesn’t respect diverse views if it’s deleting pro-equality comments from its page and trying to censor feedback in general. Both its Facebook page and Yelp page are continuing to receive negative comments because of its NOM alliance, turning the scheme into a PR disaster that it clearly is unprepared to manage. At the time this post was published, the Facebook page has again been pulled from public view.

Plenty of businesses have already learned that supporting their LGBT employees and customers is good for business. When NOM launched a protest of General Mills for its support of nondiscrimination protections and marriage equality, the company responded by offering water to the protesters, unfazed by their efforts. The fact that J&B has had to respond to detractors with censorship and lies demonstrates just how quickly an anti-equality position will compromise customers’ trust.