By Marc Jampole
It’s one thing to support Phil Robertson’s constitutional
right to free speech. It’s quite another thing to proclaim you “Stand with
Phil,” which about 200,000 people have done in signing an electronic petition
available at the Faith Driven Consumer website.
What saying that you stand with Phil means is that you agree
with his frequently-expressed homophobic, racist and sexist views. I wonder how many of the 200,000 people who
signed the petition understand that they have now insulted and demeaned real
people—work associates, people they see in the supermarket, friends of their
children. It’s possible that a number of them are like Sarah Palin and didn’t
even read the remarks, but still knee-jerked in support of a celebrity they
like.
Faith Driven Consumers, by the way, is a membership
organization that claims to represent the 15% of the population who it says
wants to buy goods and services only from companies that actively support
Christianity. The website posts reviews of businesses that analyze their
commitment to the Christian faith. Under the fast food category, for example,
the organization gives Chick-fil-A 4.5 stars for “leaning towards a Biblical
(sic) view of the world” and McDonald’s 1.5 stars for “leaning against a Biblical
view of the world.” Backyard Burger, whatever that is, earns 3 stars for a
“mixed response.”
Here is what Faith Driven Consumers says about McDonald’s: “While it is making efforts to encourage
healthier eating and to assist families in crisis through its Ronald McDonald
House philanthropy, we can’t reconcile its celebration of the homosexual agenda
and its promotion of abortion services with a corporate focus on catering to
children and families.“
The agenda of Faith Driven Consumers sounds vaguely
reminiscent of the 1930s, when the Nazis encourage Germans not to shop at
Jewish stores.
Perhaps more frightening than the exclusionary policies is
the fact that there is no information about the leadership or backers on the
website. I can find nothing on the Internet about the founder and spokesperson,
someone named Chris Stone. Faith Driven Consumers is not a nonprofit
organization, meaning that it makes money making its recommendations, just like
Angie’s List. Joining costs nothing and I see no solicitation for money or
place on the website to contribute money, so the website and organization must
be getting surreptitious backing, but from where? That’s the scary part.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson made an interesting observation
that the Duck Dynasty Dude is worse than the bus driver who hassled Rosa Parks
because the driver at least was following state law.
Phil Robertson thinks he’s following the law, too: his god’s
law, which he believes forbids homosexuality and keeps women subservient to
men.
Phil Robertson has his religion and Jesse Jackson has his,
and in their hearts both believe that religious dictates supersede the laws of
man.
But Jackson was talking not about the laws of god, which are
subject to interpretation, but about the laws of man. Jackson is a leading
figure in the civil disobedience movement, which is based on peacefully
disobeying bad and immoral laws. His career has been built on confrontations
with people who are just following orders. He understands that the man just has
a job to do.
By contrast, Phil Robertson goes out of his way to say
hurtful and insensitive things about minority groups and then tries to hide
behind his narrow and harsh version of Christianity.