Last Thursday, The Huffington Post reported that One Million Moms, a conservativa media watch group (and website) founded by AFA (American Family Association) was angry over a JC Penney ad featuring Ellen Degeneres talking to three Christmas elves.
In the ad, Degeneres makes a couple of “size jokes” like “this is no small feat,” and “no big deal” that are inappropriate to small people (such as elves). But this is not what was troubling One Million Moms. The problem was (and is) that Degeneres is making ads for JC Penney, even though she’s gay and even though they have spoken up against her in the past. In February, they wrote this on their website:
“Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon, JC Penney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful to them over all these years.” [HuffPost]
To put the statement into context, the AFA is a non-profit “Christian organization promoting the biblical ethic of decency in American society with primary emphasis on television and other media.”
First, I’m not sure what they mean by “biblical ethic of decency” because everyone knows that the Bible is full of unethical, indecent behavior. That’s how it aspires to teach us something about decency, and I’m pretty sure that the way it strives to teach it to us is by using Jesus Christ’s message of love and tolerance. So, I have a really hard time with those entities that claim to follow Christianity’s tenets, yet prove to be the most intolerant and judgmental.
The second thing that I find strange is their statement, “JCPenney is attempting to gain a new target market…will lose customers with traditional values…” What One Million Moms needs to realize is that JC Penney is not targeting a new market, it is speaking to a new America. The latest Gallup poll, conducted from November 26-29 shows that 53% of Americans favor same-sex marriage.
Finally, I find it funny that the AFA named its website One Million Moms, when it’s pretty obvious that they have a much, much smaller number of members. I was not able to find a Facebook page for One Millions Moms, even though I clicked on the Facebook link on their website. The closest I got to a One Million Moms Facebook page is one entitled One News Now that has a similar description to the mission statement on the OMM website, with 616 “Likes.” There is also an American Family Association page with 80,806 “Likes.” The Twitter link works better as it takes you to their Twitter page, @1milmoms, showing 2,180 followers. Nope, nowhere near 1,000,000.
On Saturday, the Huffington Post reported that One Million Moms is “moving on not taking any action [against JC Penney].” I wonder if they’re finally realizing how irrelevant they are, which brings me back to my original question: Who cares about One Million Moms? In essence, no one. Certainly, not the millions of Americans, the majority, who now believe that no human being should be punished or limited because of whom they love.
Welcome to a brave, new [non-traditional] world.
