As many of you may know, GLAAD and other LGBT civil rights organizations met with Ford Motor Company on Monday. Our meeting was the culmination of two weeks' worth of conversations -- beginning with a convening of movement leaders by GLAAD and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force -- to discuss widespread public speculation and media reports that Ford was cutting back on its advertising and marketing to the LGBT community in order to avoid a threatened boycott by a defamatory anti-gay religious-extremist group called American Family Association. Incensed by Ford's support for its gay and lesbian employees and its outreach to the LGBT market, the AFA had been threatening a boycott since early summer and had recently issued a public statement claiming success in their efforts to change Ford's policies. Ford's letter today (which you can read at GLAAD.org, along with GLAAD's release on Ford's decision and a joint statement issued by GLAAD and more than a dozen other LGBT organizations) repudiates the AFA's false claims of victory over the auto maker. Read More at GLAAD.ORG
A very interesting sequence of events! It's so heartening to see the existence of "gay power" after all this time. It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. I almost hope the AFA further embarrasses itself by taking the "challenge" and actually demonstrating, for the benefit of the cameras.
