Franklin Graham demands Christians boycott Wells Fargo over ad
- 2 views
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/religion/article23496706.html
“At Wells Fargo, serving every customer is core to our vision and values,” said Christina Kolbjornsen. “Diversity and inclusion are foundational to who we are as a company. Our advertising content reflects our company’s values and represents the diversity of the communities we serve.”
The company is based in San Francisco. They cannot win on this one.
And really, the commercial is in some places a reality. By God’s common grace, sinners often become decent parents, and that includes some homosexual couples. Graham is unfortunately arguing against a reality, and he’s going to discredit what he’s saying in some peoples’ minds because of that.
The flip side is that there a blessing to our government’s mis-definition of marriage to include homosexual couples. It makes their relationships a matter of public record, and in a few years, we will start to have incontestable data about how often they “make it legal”, how often they part ways, and under what circumstances they part ways. I am going to guess that we are going to find that they don’t “marry” at the same rate as heterosexuals (the legal framework is designed to protect weaker vessels that don’t clearly exist in homosexual relationships), and that when they do, their behavior is different in many ways from that of heterosexuals.
We really need to keep our eyes on the ball here.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
First of all it’s ironic that Graham is using Facebook to promote his boycott of Wells Fargo:
In recent weeks, Graham has been using Facebook – another gay-friendly company – to urge mass action against same-sex marriage. He called, for example, for Christians to pray for the U.S. Supreme Court justices – whose nine members are Jewish and Catholic – to make what Graham considers the right decision in what could become a landmark case involving the rights of gays and lesbians to marry their partners.
On “gay friendly companies”:
… major companies that have come out in support of LGBT causes are: Allstate, Amazon, Apple, Applebee’s, Best Buy, Clorox, Coca-Cola, Costco, Delta Airlines, Ford, Gap, General Motors, Gerber Baby Products, Hilton Hotels, Home Depot, IMB, Levi’s, Marriott International, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Nationwide, Nike, Olive Garden, Pepsico, Proctor and Gamble, Red Lobster, Rite Aid, Sears, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, State Farm, Target, United Airlines, UPS, Walgreens, Walt Disney Company.
Observation: That’s a lot to boycott!!
- On morality: I would regard the above as honest and ethical. I’ve purchased products (patronized) from most of the above (except Rite Aid … not in their footprint)
- On immoral: In this category would be the purveyors of filth … eg HBO and “Game of Thrones”
- On amoral and specifically the WF ad: WF knows it has customers of all stripes .. including gay! It’s legal to be gay and it seems reasonable to want their business.
Finally: Where was Franklin when his Dad was hobknobbing with liberals and popes?!
[Jim]Finally: Where was Franklin when his Dad was hobknobbing with liberals and popes?!
Fundy knee-jerk reacting much? Good grief. That’s just a cheap and unnecessary shot. Disagree with him with substantive arguments, but please spare us this kind of juvenile retort. Franklin Graham is his own man and has clearly demonstrated that he is quite different than his father…for better or for worse.
[DLCreed]Jim wrote:
Finally: Where was Franklin when his Dad was hobknobbing with liberals and popes?!
Fundy knee-jerk reacting much? Good grief. That’s just a cheap and unnecessary shot. Disagree with him with substantive arguments, but please spare us this kind of juvenile retort. Franklin Graham is his own man and has clearly demonstrated that he is quite different than his father…for better or for worse.
DL, I’m going to have to gently disagree with you here. More or less, Graham’s point in this situation is that Wells Fargo, a clearly secular institution, is providing cover for the homosexual agenda by producing a commercial involving a lesbian couple adopting. Jim is perfectly right to point out that in certain cases, Graham was quite willing to share the podium with theological liberals, and even provided cover for Bill Clinton during l’affaire Lewinsky. If you want to point to someone who ought to know better providing cover for heresy and sin, it’s not John Stumpf. It’s Billy Graham.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Bert….I believe you misunderstood me. I was not defending Billy Graham and his associations. I have significant issues with them myself. What I was taking umbrage with was painting Franklin Graham with the actions of his father. While Billy was hobnobbing with commies and Catholics, Franklin was in full-bore rebellion (Read “Rebel with a Cause”). The Lord took hold of his life and has made him a completely different kind of leader and voice from his father. That said, it’s just patently unfair to disparage a full-grown man for not taking on his father for actions with which he may not have agreed then or now. Many would not want to be pigeon-holed or held accountable by the actions of others who came before us on the family tree nor should they be required to publicly rebuke them. Plenty of others did that.
That was the point I was trying to make.
DLC
…..isn’t Franklin Graham’s job “President and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association”? So while he was certainly in rebellion when some of his father’s problems occurred, he just as certainly the heir to the corporate culture his father created. That includes hobnobbing with heretics, sad to say.
It would be the same if I inherited, say, a lunch counter where blacks had formerly been prohibited. My sin? No, but for sure I would want to make very clear that we’re leaving that in the past!
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Southern Baptists vote for Disney boycott (1997)
Leaders of the Southern Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, voted Wednesday to boycott Walt Disney Co. and its subsidiaries for what it called the company’s “anti-Christian and anti-family direction.” The boycott includes the company’s films and theme parks and its television network, ABC. An overwhelming majority of delegates voted in favor of the measure at the Southern Baptist Convention, an annual meeting held by the denomination. The vote is not binding for the nation’s 15 million Southern Baptist members. Many Southern Baptists object to Disney’s policy of giving health benefits to same-sex partners of employees, “Gay Days” at theme parks, and the release by Disney and its subsidiaries of controversial books and films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Kids.”
Southern Baptists End 8-Year Disney Boycott (2005):
Southern Baptists ended an eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. (DIS) for violating “moral righteousness and traditional family values” in a vote on the final day of the faith’s annual convention Wednesday. “We believe for the boycott to be effective, it had to have a beginning and an ending,” said Gene Mims, chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention (search) committee that put the Disney resolution before some 12,000 members at the meeting. SBC delegates also passed a resolution that encourages parents to investigate their children’s public schools to determine whether they are too accepting of homosexuality. The Disney resolution, passed at the SBC’s 1997 convention in Dallas, called for Southern Baptists to refrain from patronizing Disney theme parks and Disney products, mainly because of the entertainment company’s decision to give benefits to companions of gay employees. “We felt like it was time to end it. We’re hopeful Disney will do what the resolution calls for,” Mims added. The resolution states Disney should serve “families of America by providing only those products that affirm traditional family values.”
Franklin Graham: Will his boycott of Wells Fargo and LGBT-friendly companies work?
According to Brayden King, associate professor of management & organizations at the Kellogg School of management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., while boycotts have grown in popularity and effectiveness since the 1990s as a way to generate public concern over an issue, “They’re effective, but not for the reasons people think they’re effective.” “Essentially you’re voting with your wallet, saying, ‘We’re going to coerce you or pressure you to change,” Professor King says in an interview. “But the truth is that there is very little evidence that boycotts are effective at changing consumer behaviors. Because of that there’s very little evidence that boycotts actually have an impact on the sales revenue of a firm. So if the purpose of a boycott is to put pressure on a company by affecting its revenue they’re not very effective at that.” King, who uses the term “slacktivism” to describe campaigns that restrict themselves entirely to social media, says that boycotts often fail because “consumers are very behaviorally inert.” An example would be that while a consumer may feel strongly that a candy bar company is doing something with which they disagree, “when it comes to standing in the checkout line at the supermarket with kids pleading for that candy bar, the consumer buys the candy bar because that’s their regular behavior,” he says. … But for a boycott to be effective, King says the media attention needs to cast the firm in a negative light. With the positive media climate toward LGBT action and tolerance, he suggests that Graham’s campaign lacks the public support to be effective. “One reason this [Graham’s] boycott is less likely to be successful is that public opinion in the United States has changed dramatically around issues relating to same sex marriage. The LGBT movement has been enormously successful in getting people to change their views about this issue,” King says. “Because of that change in perspective, the average consumer and the average prospective employee for Wells Fargo, is not likely to be persuaded by the campaign. The kind of media attention this campaign gets will be less damaging to Wells Fargo than if they had been boycotted for being involved in discriminatory policies [against the LGBT community].”My own problem with boycotts is where does one stop? See my corporation list above: Apple, Coke, Amazon, etc.
Bank of America is the other major bank in Charlotte … does he think BOA is really any different than Wells Fargo? Doubt it.
I think BB&T is in Charlotte … any different than Wells Fargo in its polices towards gays? Nope!
Respectfully, but resolutely — comparing Franklin and Billy is like comparing apples and oranges. Franklin has completely transformed the perception of BGEA during his time at the helm and has drawn substantial fire from the left for taking stands against Islam, speaking our for traditional marriage, etc… He has assumed the warning voice of a prophet in contrast to the evangelistic tone his father kept. But his father is still alive and many people love him dearly — it would be poor form and disrespectful for him to repudiate his aged father using the office he inherited. His actions have regularly, however, noted the difference and in doing so, he has marked his own path without trashing his father.
The boycott won’t work — that isn’t my argument. I think attaching Franklin’s current actions to his father’s past ones is absurd.
Billy Graham’s son defends switch from Wells Fargo to BB&T — both LGBT-friendly banks
Franklin Graham: Wells Fargo went further than BB&T in promoting same-sex relationships
“But,” Graham writes, “the bank [BB&T to which he switched] did not promote the program through a national advertising campaign (or we would still be looking for another bank.”
Observation: BB&T is a regional bank … so does not do national advertising. One has to laugh.
Discussion