"...By going to www.dumpstarbucks.com, you can sign our petition, and take action to contact Starbucks directly. You can also see places near you [in Maine] where you can buy coffee rather than patronize Starbucks.
Let your Maine local Starbucks manager and the corporate leadership know that you’ve joined the Dump Starbucks campaign, and tell them where you’ll be going instead to buy coffee. Telephone numbers for local Maine Starbucks are available at the www.dumpstarbucks.com web site..."
We invite other state family policy councils and pro-family groups to join our (inter)national cause
La iniciativa, publicitada tanto en Estados Unidos como en el extranjero, donde Starbucks tiene muchas tiendas, fue titulada "Dump Starbucks", "Desechen a Starbucks".
A rough Google translation:
The initiative, advertised in both the U.S. and abroad, where Starbucks has many shops, was entitled "Dump Starbucks", "Give up a Starbucks.
Assemblyman Sean Hanna, R-Mendon, Monroe County, is eying a potential primary challenge to Sen. James Alesi, R-Perinton, Monroe County.
...Hanna, a former county legislator and regional DEC commissioner under former Gov. George Pataki, has been talked about for months as a conservative alternative to Alesi, who was the first Republican senator last year to back the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The state Conservative Party has vowed to run candidates against the four Republican senators who supported the same-sex marriage bill. -- Politics on the Hudson
One of the nation's leading traditional groups is calling for a boycott of Starbucks because of the company's support of a gay "marriage" bill and its legal opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act.
The "Dump Starbucks" protest by the National Organization for Marriage was announced Wednesday (March 21), the same day the organization launched a DumpStarbucks.com website where supporters could sign a petition to Starbucks, tell their friends via social media about the boycott, and even enter their zip code to learn of alternatives to Starbucks.
...NOM was a leading group in reversing gay "marriage" laws in California and Maine.
... The boycott is also aimed at Seattle's Best Coffee and Evolution Fresh Juices, which are owned by Starbucks.
Di contro la National organization for marriage, d'ispirazione conservatrice, ha lanciato una campagna di boicottaggio in Usa e all'estero, dal nome Dump Starbucks campaign.
... and for those of us whose Italian is not up to speed, here's a rough Google translation we touched up:
The National Organization for marriage, which is conservative, has launched a boycott campaign in the U.S. and abroad, the name of which is the Dumps Starbucks campaign.
Former president Jimmy Carter has been strongly identified as a “Born Again” Christian and as a liberal Democrat for nearly five decades. He is once more blending those roles as he promotes “his” latest book, his own study Bible.
... However, he said he drew the line, “maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people.”
“If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to,” he said, adding his own church accepts “gay members on an equal basis.”
When [HuffPos's Religion Editor] Raushenbush pressed him about whether he believed the Bible is God’s word, Carter answered, “the basic principles of the Bible are taught by God, but written down by human beings deprived of modern day knowledge. So there is some fallibility in the writings of the Bible. But the basic principles are applicable to my life and I don’t find any conflict among them.”
“There are many verses in the Bible that you could interpret very rigidly,” Carter said, “and that makes you ultimately into a fundamentalist.”
In the latest Minnesota Marriage Minute, Kalley Yanta answers the question posted by gay marriage activists: "If marriage is really about procreation, then why do we allow infertile couples, senior citizens and others who cannot conceive enter into marriage, but not same-sex couples?
She answers, in part: "Procreation can only occur through the complete bodily union of a man and a woman... the aspect of the sex-union that makes the couple's relationship suitable to marriage is it's potential for procreation. It does not matter then if spouses do not intend to have children or even if factors such as infertility might prevent conception from occurring. Of course plenty of children have been born to couples who thought they were infertile."
She continues: "Promoting a vibrant and flourishing marriage culture is clearly in the [interest of] the common good. Marriage between men and women is a distinctive and irreplaceable way that humanity can flourish. Because of that, the strength (or weakness) of marriage as a social institution profoundly affects the well-being of everyone in society."
A self-proclaimed ‘lesbian’ whose two children attend a Catholic school near Peterborough is demanding that the Peterborough Catholic school board remove a Catechism quote dealing with homosexuality from a school pamphlet. Ann Michelle Tesluk has started an online petition to pressure the board to action and describes her activities as gearing to make the Catholic Church into an “openly gay friendly church.”
The pamphlet in question, however, is controversial from more than one perspective. While quoting the Catechism that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered”, the pamphlet also misrepresents Catholic teaching in numerous ways. The pamphlet calls on schools to highlight homosexual role models and familiarize students with terms like “LGBTQQ” and “two-spirited.” It indicates that Canada legalized same-sex “marriage” in 2005 without mentioning that the Church opposes such unions.
NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher in National Review's The Corner blog:
I was at the annual board meeting of the Church of Starbucks in Seattle on Wednesday.
Honestly that’s what it felt like. It opened with a self-congratulatory pitch by Howard Schultz on how terrible life in America is, and how much he is helping, then it melded smoothly into a “our values are the barrier to entry for other coffeecompanies” bottom line.
I was there with the National Organization for Marriage, to ask Howard Schultz if it’s really true that gay marriage is “core” to Starbucks’s brand and its values.
The protest against the inclusion of the Alberta Human Rights Act in Section 16 of the province’s proposed new Education Act (Bill 2) is escalating, with over 2000 attending a peaceful protest at the Alberta Legislature on Monday, March 19.
Paul Faris, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, attended the protest and told LifeSiteNews that the rally was “a huge success.”
“With at least 2100 people attending, this rally was amongst the largest in Alberta history,” Faris said.
... Faris observed that “it wasn’t just homeschoolers there, but lots of private, Catholic and public schoolers, so it’s becoming a very broad-based movement of parents who are concerned that the government is taking away their freedom in education.”
The focal point of the protest is the possibility that home and private schools that teach the precepts of their faith could be prosecuted by human rights tribunals for “hate crimes” under the Alberta Human Rights Act (AHRA). The AHRA has been used in the past to prosecute conservatives and Christians, most notably pastor Steve Boissoin, who was found “guilty” by a tribunal of “hate speech” against homosexuals after he published a letter to the editor in a local newspaper. That conviction was subsequently overturned by the court system.
When civil partnerships were introduced in 2004, I cheered...
... But the gay marriage lobby does not think this enough. Fairness is all very well: what they seek, however, is equality, including in terms of access to marriage. And those who oppose this, on whatever grounds, are accused of anti-gay propaganda. It doesn’t matter that I’ve publicly urged the Catholic Church to recognise its debt to gays, or that I count Peter Tatchell as a hero and a friend: ever since I questioned the Coalition’s plans to legalise gay marriage, in an article for this paper, I’ve been attacked as an unjust, homophobic and irrational clone of Rick Santorum.
... Tories were once stalwart supporters of traditional marriage; but this Prime Minister talks of making gay marriage legal and straight marriage costly. (Tax benefits are an incentive for couples, even with children, to live apart.) The one minister who champions heterosexual marriage, Iain Duncan Smith, has yet to see his proposal for a marriage tax break come into effect.
This is a terrible shame. Marriage may be a force for the good, but for some gay people, it has become a fortress they must storm. They argue that, in its present state, marriage discriminates and excludes. The ancient and much-loved edifice must be broken into – or simply broken.
As the UK Telegraph introduces him, Lord Tebbit of Chingford is one of Britain's most outspoken conservative commentators and politicians. He was a senior cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government and is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party:
"...Certainly, no one seems to have thought through the massive legislative ramifications of the Prime Minister’s latest attempt to distance himself from that toxic Thatcherite Tory Party which kept winning elections. If one says it quickly and doesn't think too much about it, moving on from civil partnership to “gay marriage” sound like a pretty straightforward bit of legislation.
However, as Charles Moore writing in The Spectator has said, after a little more thought it looks more complex. Was anyone asked to check in how many pieces of legislation the words “husband” or “wife” appear? Are they to be replaced by some suitable non-discriminatory new word or words? Then what about the grounds for divorce? How will adultery be redefined? Exactly what kind of sexual acts outside marriage will constitute grounds for divorce? What will amount to the consummation of a marriage?
What fun will be had amongst our legislators as they grapple with the question of the appropriate titles for the “partners” of those who receive the honour of knighthoods, or are made Dames, Barons or Baronesses. At present we live happily with the inequity of husbands receiving no title when their wives are honoured, but surely that cannot continues under the politically correct new order.
Within the can of worms that Mr Cameron is determined to open there are several nests of snakes. Why should a marriage be confined to just
two persons? What is the barrier to the marriage of sisters, brothers or even parents and children?
Mr Cameron's justification for all this is that he believes in it “because he is a Conservative” is absurd. Conservatives do not turn over long-standing (several thousands of years across widely different cultures all over the world, in this case) with so little thought. He did not mention it when he set out his stall in the Conservative Party leadership election not long ago. Did he believe it then?"
We're just about to hit 7,000 pledges over at DumpStarbucks.com. And my post at The Corner has generated more comments--121--than anything I've ever posted.
Stay tuned, we are in for a big ride with this thing!
I think the arrogance of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is key. How can anyone think it's in Starbucks best interests to endorse gay marriage in the state of Washington--or ask courts to overturn DOMA??
If you haven't yet, go to DumpStarbucks.com--and send your friends. Thank-you!
NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher's latest syndicated column is on our Dump Starbucks campaign. An excerpt:
I don't generally support boycotts, especially not the kind gay marriage advocates have launched that target whole business enterprises if any one major partner personally donates to a measure like California's Proposition 8. It's wrong because the basic norms of business are that people of differing moral views, even on deeply felt moral issues like gay marriage and abortion, need to work together to grow a company to serve their customers and shareholders.
But Starbucks has voluntarily decided -- as a corporation -- to associate its brand with a major political issue, the CEO just confirmed. I was in the room. I heard him.
Customers across the world have a right to know that contrary to the promises made by the corporation in the Middle East and elsewhere, Starbucks does subsidize political causes. Drinking a cup of Starbucks coffee, sadly, means supporting gay marriage.
... Speak out, and stop being invisible to powerful men like Schultz. The business of America may or may not be business, but the business of corporations is to make an honest profit by serving all their customers well, both those who favor and those who oppose gay marriage.
Republican rookie David Storobin is clinging to a 143-vote lead over Councilman Lew Fidler (D–Marine Park) in the hard-fought race to replace disgraced former state Sen. Carl Kruger, according to the results of a recount on Wednesday.
Storobin’s razor-thin lead grew by 23 votes after poll workers recounted machine ballots from Tuesday night’s too-close-to-call special election for the vacant Senate seat.
The Russian-born lawyer emerged with 10,505 votes, while Fidler wound up with 10,362.
Final results will be determined by more than 700 emergency and absentee ballots that will be counted next week. The city Board of Elections is expected to announce a winner by the first week in April, several sources said.
... Storobin’s camp scoffed at the claim [that Fidler would win after the absentees are counted].
“They had a huge voter registration advantage in the district and they lost,” said Storobin spokesman David Simpson. “Why would they have a magical come-from-behind victory with absentee ballots? It’s utter nonsense.”
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