Jamilah King, in a blog entry at ColorLines, checks in on Lowe's decision to pull ads for TLC's reality show All-American Muslim. She writes that the decision put the big-box home-improvement chain at the center of a morality war against sex, gays and Muslims. It also threatens to wipe out the chain's past diversity efforts, she writes.
This weekβs uproar seems to be a monumental victory for [David] Caton [whose Florida Family Association started the campaign against All-American Muslim], who has waged a deeply personal and largely solitary war against everything from Playboy to MTV to Nickleodeon. Though his organization claims to have a membership of over 35,000, Caton is the only paid staff person.Β
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In the Florida Family Associationβs own list of nearly 150 βaccomplishmentsβ since 2000, the overwhelming majority are actions taken against the porn industry. For instance, in 2002 the group wrote that it βinfluencedβ nearly 2,300 Circle K stores to stop selling pornographic magazines. In 2003, the group boasts that it developed PornCrawler, computer software that allowed users to identify websites that placed unrestricted porn on the Internet.
Alongside its crusade against the porn industry, the Florida Family Foundation has waged a steady war against what it calls βspecial rights for homosexuals.β On its website, the group brags about its effort to influence Floridaβs legislature to oppose pro-LGBT bills. In anticipation of last summerβs Gay Day at Disneyβs Magic Kingdom in Orlando, FFA spent $7,000 to hire a pilot to fly an airplane banner near the event that read βWarning Gay Day at Disney 6/4.β The effort was to warn Central Floridians about the βthousands of homosexualsβ going to the park to βcelebrate their immoral lifestyles,β the group later wrote on its website.
That such a fringe character could have such a large influence doesnβt come as a surprise for Muslim rights advocates.
Read Jamilah King's entire blog entry at ColorLines.
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