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NOM Is Still Protesting General Mills, Now For Supporting Healthy Living

The National Organization for Marriage is still boycotting General Mills for its support of marriage equality. Who knew? Though objections to Chick-fil-A’s anti-gay policies warranted national media coverage, little attention has been paid to NOM’s incredibly paltry “dump” campaigns. Yesterday NOM published a reminder that it hasn’t given up, with a new reason for conservatives to oppose General Mills: it will be promoting health! Here’s NOM’s Jonathan Baker:

General Mills has launched a new website, in cooperation with America Online and Everyday Health, hosted and staffed by the liberal Huffington Post news site. General Mills’ new website, called Live Better America, will offer what you might expect: recipes, nutrition and healthy eating tips from General Mills designed to appear “authentic” (read: “we want readers to believe these are real articles, not an advertising effort designed to boost our sales and products”).

Why would a company do this? The Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal asked that very question of General Mills. The response was that General Mills wanted to expand beyond food into lifestyle issues. The General Mills blog gives additional information that should give us pause: in addition to things like recipes, healthy eating, fitness and diet and nutrition — things you would expect a food company to cover — the site will cover mind and body issues and relationships. Look for these lifestyle, mind and body, and relationship articles to start off in a very benign manner (who thinks we don’t need a little more exercise?), but expect before long a transition into a renewed effort pushing for the redefinition of marriage and family in subtle and not so subtle ways.

Regardless of what NOM believes about marriage, same-sex couples are still going to have “mind and body issues and relationships” to deal with. If this new General Mills-sponsored project happens to give advice that is inclusive of the experiences of LGBT people, the worst that might happen is straight people learn something from it. NOM can actually only be objecting to one of two possibilities: that General Mills might acknowledge LGBT people exist or that it cares about them being healthy. It’s unclear which objection is more odious.

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And how does NOM encourage its supporters to help the General Mills boycott? By continuing to support Chick-fil-A. Even NOM knows its effort has no legs, and after all, nothing promotes healthy lifestyles quite like eating more fried chicken.