TUPELO, Miss. - Ultra-right-wing "family values" organization the American Family Association earlier this month issued a call for its members to boycott food megaliths PepsiCo and Campbell's Soup Company.
"Many people aren't aware that when their school participates in [the] Campbell's ‘Labels for Education' program, they are supporting a company that has openly come out in support of homosexual marriage, and it has no intentions of stopping that support," the alert about Campbell's noted Jan. 12. "Many of the schools that participate don't know that Campbell's supports the homosexual publication The Advocate with advertising. The Advocate is a leading promoter of same-sex marriage."
As for PepsiCo, AFA is outraged by the soft-drink bottler's mandate that all employees attend sexual orientation sensitivity training. In addition, within the past two years the company has donated $500,000 each to the Human Rights Campaign and Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Both HRC and PFLAG supported efforts in California to defeat controversial Proposition 8, a ballot initiative which defined marriage as one man and one woman. Challenges to the California state constitutional amendment, which passed, are now working their ways through the court system.
According to an action alert at the AFA website, "the [$1 million] was to be used to help promote homosexuality in the workplace."
In fact, according to PepsiCo, the money was given by the benevolent PepsiCo Foundation to improve diversity awareness. Nevertheless, the AFA views PepsiCo's largesse as "refusal to remain neutral in the culture war."
"Pepsi refuses to give money to any pro-family organization that opposes the homosexual agenda," an AFA spokesman said. "Plus, every homosexual organization we know of is overwhelmingly pro-abortion."
In the case of both companies, AFA has asked all members to sign and distribute a boycott pledge, complain to the manufacturer's representative nearest them and write to the chairman of each company's board of directors. In addition, AFA wants all members to insist schools stop participating in Campbell's Labels for Education program, which provides equipment to schools in exchange for proofs of purchase of Campbell's products.
In the past, AFA-organized anti-gay boycotts have targeted American companies like hamburger chain McDonald's and Disney resorts. In response, McDonald's declined to renew its membership in the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, but Disney declined to cave in to the organization's demands.
PepsiCo manufactures brands including Pepsi, Tropicana, Frito-Lay, Quaker and Gatorade. Campbell's manufactures Swanson, Prego, Pepperidge Farm and V-8, among other brands.
