Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Begging For A Boycott: Google's "Legalize Love" Campaign Forces The Right To Take It's Medicine










From: The Christian Post:Google Pushes Gay Agenda Worldwide With 'Legalize Love' Campaign
Search engine titan Google announced Saturday its new "Legalize Love" campaign to pressure countries where it has offices to give gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders more rights and recognition.

Titan? More like Goliath, at least to the Christian Right. And any stones thrown will be to little avail:


The analogy of Goliath will no doubt be used by social conservatives, but a more apt analogy might be one of a mother forcing bad tasting medicine on a petulant child: Google's stance as a the"new" corporation (and one in opposition to ones like Mitt Romney's Bain Capital) has been one of a young parent nurturing the future of global corporations.* And when those corporations need to have a stern hand regarding their health in social issues, the powerful mother Google is there to see that steps are taken to remedy ills.

Google, long known for their pro-LGBT business practices, has a clear goal. The company's Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe says: ‘We want our employees who are gay or lesbian or transgender to have the same experience outside the office as they do in the office. It is obviously a very ambitious piece of work.’Google will join forces with other non-government organizations (NGO's) to lobby the governments.

Countries troubled with systemic gay rights problems and in which Google has offices: Dubai, Poland, Singapore, Russia, Ukraine, Beijing, Malaysia, Taiwan, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Egypt. It has started unleashing ads in Poland and Singapore.





The Legalize Love Spillover


The formal scope of Legalize Love may be enough to cause nightmares to social conservatives, but the real scope is like an Armageddon to those who have made inroads in exporting hate: countries like Latvia, Moldova, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Russia and the Ukraine, where rabid "evangelicals" have made inroads may find themselves out in the cold on this one. African nations eager to embrace Rightwing Christianity but who also want to enter into the 21st century with technology may find their allegiances shifting: "treat all our employees with respect and allow them their rights." The campaign may slowly undo the work of such preachers as Rick Warren, Scott Lively and Lou Engle (the last two highly involved in Uganda's "kill the gays" bill).

Boycott Blues
In the past, social conservatives have taken on the likes of JC Penney, Starbucks, and Home Depot. Those boycotts have been almost fruitless. By contrast, however, Google has more assets and equity than the three retail giants combined. And their international scope is astounding: it processes over one billion search request per day and runs over one million servers. In other words, the sun never sets on the Google empire.

Buster Wilson, the general manager of the AFA’s radio network, said on AFA Today that a Google boycott “is going to be a hard one for a lot of us” but will “test the meat of our convictions.”

After boycotts of JC Penney, Starbucks, Girl Scout Cookies, JC Penney, Lowe's, Home Depot, Nabisco's Oreo cookies, and the GAP, there surely is no meat - only gristle.




* Fortune magazine ranked Google as number one on its 100 Best Companies To Work For list for 2012.