From the Archives: Is your ol' Ford pickup truck too gay? (March 27, 2007)

This story originally appeared in The Daily Tar Heel.

Is your ol' Ford pickup truck too gay?
By David Donovan

March 27, 2007

Apparently, there are liberal cars and conservative cars. As a liberal, I should drive something European, a hybrid, or a Huffy 10-speed I can pedal to the farmer's co-op.

Sadly, I drive a Ford, which is a red-blooded American car. I feared that I never could enrage my adversaries by the mere mundane task of schlepping myself to work.

But now Ford is the target of a radical conservative group, with the deceptively ambiguous name of the American Family Association, which sits on the blurry line of what is or isn't a "hate group."

Ford is apparently too gay, and not just the Ford Focuses. The AFA is calling for a boycott of Ford for promoting "the homosexual agenda." Ford's crimes against humanity include running ads in gay life publications, "actively recruit(ing) homosexuals for employment" and scoring high for diversity, "a code word for homosexuality."

Now, one's feelings toward homosexuality are a very personal and complicated moral issue, and I don't begrudge anyone's attitudes toward it. But I thought we had at least moved beyond this sort of petty childishness.

Having lost control of the government, the lunatic fringe of the right now focuses its influence on corporate America. It's not a bad strategy, given how much control corporations have over the options available to us as consumers.

And let me be clear what I mean when I say lunatic. I'm talking only about people like Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., who called gay marriage "the most important issue that we face today." Not terrorism. Not Iraq. Not poverty, immigration, trillion-dollar deficits, global warming or Britney Spears. It's gay folk. That's crazy talk from a woman who has made very poor use of her time in office.

Here's why I think corporate boycotts will be more common. Every session, Musgrave used to introduce a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Then the 2006 elections came along and wiped out most of her allies, and now there are no plans to reintroduce the bill in Congress, so gay-bashers must pursue new tactics.

On one level, they're just silly. If gay people want to buy cars, Ford should market to them. And if a gay person can do a job well, Ford should recruit him or her. Ford has enough trouble already without alienating customers or workers.

But on another level, they're serious. Companies are powerful. The end of apartheid in South Africa was hastened by pressure from other nations, but the bigger impetus to change was businesses that divested from South Africa under pressure from consumers. Faced with an exodus of money, South Africa was forced to change.

In that case, corporate pressure achieved what political pressure alone probably couldn't and acted as a force for good. But if AFA types can enlist big business in efforts to enforce moral norms, it can be almost as effective as any constitutional amendment.

And for that reason, a lot of people like myself who have very libertarian instincts are lined up against traditional conservatives. I worry about a government becoming so powerful that it can tell me how to run my personal life. But I also worry about corporations becoming so powerful they can do the same thing, and I don't like the idea that they can be used as tools for a radical social agenda.

The Ford boycott counts little more than half a million signees and picked on a company already making a beeline for bankruptcy, so I don't think it'll be a source of great social upheaval, but it can be a source of great laughs. See, the AFA site has this ironic habit of criticizing TV clips as being sickening and disgusting displays that no decent person would watch.

And then, of course, they provide a link so you can go watch it. In light of folks like Ted Haggard, I wonder if they protest too loudly.