LGBT Friendly Businesses To Reap Big Bucks From Proposition 8 Outrage?

    Desert Observer's Page

Palm Springs, California.  Express your outrage - buy from our friends! That's the message to the LGBT community in a Nov. 26th Desert Sun newspaper Valley Voice opinion piece from local businesswoman Jill Pentrack. Read her "Prop. 8 boycott the only way to motivate" article online at MyDesert.com.

There's no mention of a boycott in the opinion piece. Instead the message is one extolling the importance of buying from friendly businesses. In other words, "Express your outrage - buy from our friends!" Wow! What a great business marketing scheme. Surely no clearer message exhorting public purchases could be devised, than one which takes advantage of Proposition 8 outrage and channels it into sales for the anti-Proposition 8 business community. Can't you just hear those cash registers going ca-chink,ca-chink as they ring up sales from those outraged at being denied equal rights? Besides, shopping sure beats marching and demonstrating in the streets.

Has the LGBT quest for equal rights movement sunk so low it is now just another dollar grabbing business tool? Is the best the movement now has to offer is a link between Proposition 8 outrage and increased sales for friendly businesses? Whatever happened to the struggle for equality? And when did civil rights "outrage" become a Madison Avenue marketing tool?

The LGBT community needs leaders and spokespersons who understand what it means to fight, struggle, and engage in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience. Equality is not going to fall from the skies and buying from friendly businesses in no way satisfies the need to express outrage and the demand for civil rights. Shopping, despite Madison Avenue-type claims to the contrary, is not on the list of recommended actions that will lead to the establishment of equal rights.

Bond Shands
Palm Springs
November 26, 2008

Posted by Desert Observer at 11/26/2008 11:03 AM
Categories: Opinion

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