I do care. It's where the thinking of this sort of decision leads that makes me very concerned. Ford is the #2 car company in this country. And what if other big corporations follow suit? What if others pull their ads in gay pubs? That doesn't mean gays disappear. But that's what the AFA wants. So what's their next move then? Targeting Ford sponsoring gay events? Targeting Ford's gay employees? I find it imperative to stop the AFA's efforts with their first try at Ford. It worked with Microsoft. The employees there made the difference and Microsoft backed away from a bad decision concerning the gay community. Now that issue has disappeared. That's what I want for this one.

My question to the AFA is how does stopping Ford from advertising in gay publications protect America's families?

I agree wtih Alex on this one. While I think such advertising decissions to be incredibly hateful and distasteful, they are far from illegal. Such is freedom.

I doubt that. What would be the claim of the litigants? That they were somehow harmed because of the pressure of a group to eliminate specific advertising?

We have freedom of speech- up to a point. (You should know that, Scaeagles! I don't see too many people joking about blowing up planes these days without incident, do you?). Same goes with hate speech- when any group is targeted by another for reasons such as color of skin or gender, there is usually some sort of recourse by the injured party, such as civil (or in cases of criminal activity) criminal court. We've seen quite a lot of this up here in the PNW, with the end result being the Order finally packed up and moved on. Right now the AFA and their like are going after large corporations in the form of threatened boycotts. Do you really believe it will stop there? Every success only emboldens them. They do not wish to co-exist with the gay community, they want them gone. I suppose they hope to one day legislate them out of existence, but so long as they think their acting on orders from God, who knows how far they'd take it.

Hate speech is protected unless it directly incites violence. A decission to not make specifically targeted advertisement for a segment of the population does not incite violence.

If I lobbied against marketing to blacks, are you suggesting I wouldn't have consequences? They (The AFA,etc) are walking a fine line, but their activities certainly bear watching, and sooner or later, they will cross that line. If I were a magazine publication that lost advertising clients to such groups, I would take them to civil court and sue them for damages. Maybe I'd win, maybe not, but they would be exposed.

Perhaps there might be economic consequences for poor marketing decissions, but legal? No, and there shouldn't be. I really don't see a need for a Constitutionally protected right to be advertised at.

Alex said it best...

No one is restricting anyone's rights. The gay community continues to have the same access to advertisments as the rest of us do. Ford has made a perfectly legal (though likely misguided) decission to change their advertising strategy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm disgusted that a small, closed minded group weilds such market-place power. But I don't question their right to do so. And I'm equally disgusted, if not more-so, that Ford felt the need to segregate (and I use that word quite on purpose) gay advertising from mainstreem advertising in the first place.

I suppose what I really mean by 'it should be illegal' is just the blatant discrimination directed against the gay community. The military's stupid 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, the fact that churches can deny employment to gay individuals, the lack of civil rights that everyone else enjoys..... This is just another example of how pervasive and accepted it is. If Ford caved in to a threatened boycott regarding advertising to women, I think most people would be outraged. I'd like to think so, anyway.

As I said to a person who PMed me about this, my response would be the same if Ford had cancelled advertising that targeted women, suburban moms, hispanics, blacks, etc.

The problem with making hate speech illegal is that what constitutes hate speech is a very malleable concept and you may not like it when someone else gets to define it.