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Pressure works. And bigotry doesn't.


So, here's a rather innocuous advert for wedding planning service in this, the most wonderful time of the year.



I mean, come on. Happy couple. Wacky friends. What's not to love?

Well, according to a group with shy of 4,000 followers on Twitter billing itself as "One Million Moms", a lot.

See, if you watched the video, the couple consisted of two women.

Now, granted, here in socialist fagtopia California, this doesn't just not raise an eyebrow, it doesn't make us raise our eyes from our phones. For God's sake, I was my mom's date to a gay wedding—with two men, not even the more socially acceptable lesbians!

This group, One Million Moms, bills itself as protecting Christian values. (Funny. The Christian values with which I was raised were to love your neighbor as yourself. Weird. Anywho.)

This ad was running on the very white and very "traditional" Hallmark Channel. Until the tribunes of morals One Million Moms got wind of it. Boy, they went into action! Their [puts on glasses] not quite one million members if their Twitter stats are anything to go by sprang into action and harangued the poor executives at the Hallmark Channel to remove this filth from their pristine airwaves. And remove it they did!

Now. Thirty years ago, this ad wouldn't have existed. But this isn't thirty years ago. Same sex marriage has been legal across the US since 2015. President Barack Obama coming out in favor of same sex marriage did more to move the Overton Window than any braying by Bernbots or Occupy morons. Same sex marriage and gay rights are just not an issue save in the more deranged cesspits of the right.

Yet, these cesspits still try their tired old tactics. And, of course, these cesspits are the motive force of the Republican Party.

The Hallmark Channel must have been asleep like Rip Van Winkle for the past four years, and thought this was 1999, not 2019. "People protesting about teh gheys! We must censor!!"

And then what has happened any time any blinkered person or corporation gets on their moral high horse for the past three years predictably happened: The Hallmark Channel's shit hit the fan.

#BoycottHallmark trended on Twitter for the better part of Saturday. The channel was excoriated across the breadth and width of the people who matter: those who buy their products, in far larger numbers than the bigots. In caving to what seems to be a small, fringe group punching above its weight, the channel alienated customers who have no truck with homophobic bigotry, or bigotry of any kind.

On Sunday, Hallmark bid such a hasty retreat that Vladimir Putin was able to capture a Tomahawk missile. (Look it up, kids.)
Gay people watch the Hallmark Channel. Straight people who support gay people watch the Hallmark Channel. And people who might not know any gay people but don't cotton to bigotry watch the Hallmark Channel. And they far outnumber "One Million" Moms.

Corporations aren't socially aware because they're liberal socialist organizations. They're socially aware because so are the people who buy their wares. The counties which voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 account for two-thirds of America's economic output. The Electoral College may (probably not) eke out one more unjust victory for reactionaries. But money talks, and bullshit walks. And it's those of us in the blue counties who have the money. Climate change is real, and gay people loving whom they want isn't controversial. I'm a capitalist because the collective buying power of liberals will change this world much quicker than any electoral politics. If, as expected, Democrats take the White House and Senate next year, multinational corporations will fall over themselves to align with the Zeitgeist. Russia can fulminate all it wants, but it's nothing but a tiny market for Microsoft. China is the bigger problem, but history grinds its way, and China, too, will be ground. Meanwhile, here in the US, "One Million" Moms will realize that their bigotry is yesterday's news.

Dear bigots, racists, Nazis: Your time is gone. It's been gone for decades. You thought you had a renaissance with Donald Trump's installation. But he is emblematic of the paucity of your vision. You will be forgotten by history, yet will benefit from the world we create. You're welcome.
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