Should Amazon allow customers to contribute to the BSA?

[AZMike]

From: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amazon-boy-scouts-of-america-anti-gay-problem

[h=1]Pressure grows on Amazon to cut ties with Boy Scouts of America[/h] 05/15/14 07:04 PMâ€â€UPDATED 05/16/14 05:54 PM

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By Emma Margolin

Target, Chick-fil-A, Mozilla, and now Amazon? The e-commerce company, ironically known for being a friend to the LGBT community, is fast becoming the latest to earn scorn for its association with anti-gay policies.

AmazonSmile, a program announced last fall which allows consumers to donate 0.5% of all purchases to charitable organizations of the buyer’s choosing, lists the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) among its nearly one million options. For context, other charities spotlighted this week include the Wounded Warrior Project, the American Red Cross, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The BSA has been engulfed in controversy for more than a decade over its policy barring openly gay members from participation. Last year, the group made things worse for itself when the national council voted to lift its ban on openly gay children, but leave in place its barrier to openly gay adults. Since then, several major corporations and foundations – including Alcoa, Intel, and Disney – have cut ties with the BSA over its halfway policy of inclusion.

… but not Amazon. And now, people are starting to take notice.

As of Thursday, over 105,000 had signed a change.org petition calling on Amazon to suspend its support of the Boys Scouts for as long as the group continued to ban gay adults. Seventeen-year-old Pascal Tessier, considered the first openly gay Eagle Scout approved under the new policy (though there’s no official tracking mechanism to confirm,) launched the petition last month, afterthe BSA ousted Geoffrey McGrath, a gay Seattle Scoutmaster, and revoked his church’s charter agreement.

“Geoff is an Eagle Scout, a husband and the founder of two Scouting units in underserved neighborhoods,†wrote Tessier on his change.org petition, and yet, “Amazon is supporting the Boy Scouts through its Amazon Smile program. Discrimination is nothing to smile about.â€Â

The connection is surprising, given Amazon’s reputation as a progressive company and ally to the LGBT community. Human Rights Campaign, a fierce BSA critic, gave Amazon a high score of 90 on its most recent Corporate Equality Index, which measures companies’ commitment to inclusivity. And two years ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos donated $2.5. million to the campaign for marriage equality in Washington state.

Spokesperson Ty Rogers didn’t address this discrepancy in an emailed statement to msnbc:

“Customers can select from nearly a million legally recognized 501©(3) charitable organizations on AmazonSmile. We rely on lists published by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the US Office of Foreign Assets Control to determine if certain organizations are ineligible to participate.â€Â

The company’s website gives further details on eligibility. In addition to having good standing with the IRS and being located in one of the 50 U.S. states or the District of Columbia, participating organizations cannot “engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities.â€Â

 

By that standard, said Joe Levin, co-founder and general counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center – on whose judgment Amazon claims to rely for determining eligibility – the Boy Scouts shouldn’t make the cut.

“There’s not a lot of question that the Boy Scouts’ position on gay leadership definitely qualifies as intolerant by anybody’s standards – especially ours,†said Levin to msnbc. “If [Amazon’s] relying at all upon the principles of the Southern Poverty Law Center, they couldn’t include the Boy Scouts on their list of potential recipients.â€Â

Levin conceded that if Amazon were only using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of designated hate groups to determine which charities could participate in its program, then the Boy Scouts would be in the clear.

“We don’t list the Boy Scouts (as a hate group,)†said Levin. “We only do that if we have a group that’s propagating known falsehoods associated with a particular person or group – in this case, the LGBT community. The Boy Scouts haven’t really done that.â€Â

However, Amazon hasn’t made clear whether they’re solely using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups or not.

As the gay rights movement picked up steam in recent years, several companies have come under fire for failure to keep up. In 2010, Target provoked a backlash when it donated $150,000 to MN Forward, which endorsed an anti-marriage equality candidate for Minnesota governor. Target’s CEO later apologized. Two years after that, Chick-fil-A’s top boss set off a wave of protests when he made no bones about his opposition to same-sex marriage. Looking back, CEO Dan Cathy now says he made a mistake. And earlier this year, Mozilla’s newly-minted head honcho stepped down amid a firestorm of criticism for his 2008 donation to the campaign for Proposition 8 – California’s former ban on same-sex marriage.

Amazon hasn’t yet unleashed the same level outrage. But if history is any guide, supporting anti-gay policies – either directly, or indirectly – can be very bad for business.

 

[The attached poll shows 60% believe people should be allowed to contribute as they wish (1,835 votes) vs. 40% who feel Amazon shouldn't allow it (1,217).]

 

This is probably a bit of a quandry. The anti-censorship backlash came back to bite SunTrust Bank over the whole HGTV flap, and they recanted after customers started pulling their accounts, as have A&E and Crackerbarrel on the Duck Dynasty imbroglio. Amazon, which was trying to do a nice thing for the BSA and other charities, is probably wishing they had never started the AmazonSmiles campaign at this point.

 

[AZMike]

So, we have this going for us: The Southern Poverty Law Center has not designated the Boy Scouts as one of their hate groups. Not yet, anyway.* And Amazon doesn't think that the Scouts engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities.â€Â

 

Whew.

 

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*And considering what happened when the SPLC designated the Family Research Council as a "Hate Group," that's probably a good thing: http://washingtonexaminer.com/fbi-video-domestic-terrorist-says-he-targeted-conservative-group-for-being-anti-gay/article/2528072

[Hueymungus]

There isn't anything we can do about this. Let's just get back to Scouting and let the local and National Councils deal with it.

[RememberSchiff]

I wonder if this will "Light a Fire" at the National Annual Meeting in Nashville this week?

http://www.scouting.org/nationalannualmeeting.aspx

[qwazse]

I think we should petition change.org to post a link to the local BSA FOS collection site so that users can have the option of signing a petition or making a contribution to The boys, or both!

[King Ding Dong]

I think we should petition change.org to post a link to the local BSA FOS collection site so that users can have the option of signing a petition or making a contribution to The boys' date=' or both![/quote'] Thanks for volunteering for the project! You have our full support.

[qwazse]

Thanks for volunteering for the project! You have our full support.

 

As soon as I find a youth looking for some service hours.

[AZMike]

What is interesting is that we see the same phenomenon happen repeatedly: A gay political pressure group (GPPG) discovers some corporation, or a person connected to a corporation, has some sort of connection to a group that promotes a traditional definition of marriage. The GPPG starts Facebook petitions demanding they cut ties to that person, and begins an on-line demand for media attention. The corporation immediately buckles.

 

What has happened in several recent cases is that the public backlash from the issue has in several cases caused the corporations to do a quick reverse. Americans at heart are a people who tend to support freedom of expression, but we also like to see people employed, and I think the vast consensus of Americans is that you shouldn't lose your job or position because of a constitutionally-protected expression of speech.

 

Corporations tend to be concerned with the bottom line, and when Cracker Barrel realized they had alienated a large portion of their customer base by a hasty corporate decision, they caved. When SunTrust Bank realized that one of their vendors had angered a lot of their customer base, they backed off.

 

And not all corporations and agencies buckle - Target and the Salvation Army have been the, well, target of a gay boycott for years, but they never caved and no one really notices.

 

Protecting your constitutional rights these days requires that you gain control of the public narrative, and the BSA isn't very good at that, probably because as a group, we profess values of civility and courtesy that aren't often shared by those who wish to see us dissolved or irrevocably changed, and who don't play by the same rule book. Despite this, we still possess enormous reservoirs of good will among the American public (we have millions of good-will ambassadors in spiffy uniforms who are out doing community service projects, and the brand name itself is associated with helping little old ladies across the street and following a code of honor.)

 

If the BSA, or a subsidiary like the OA or another group would respond to these kind of attacks in a civil but firm manner, by pledging to boycott those who try to harm the BSA, deny BSA families the right of expression, or cut off funding - there would be a lot less of this going on. When Disney Corporation decided that they would not allow employees to contribute work hours to the BSA, there should have been an immediate on-line Facebook petition, pledging that the families of those who signed would not go to Disney movies, not attend Disney Theme Parks, not buy Disney merchandise, and not go on Disney Cruises until the ban was lifted.

 

I guarantee Scouting families contribute far more money to the Disney Corporation than they are prepared to lose. I also guarantee you that the message would go viral on sympathetic social media sites.

 

[fred johnson]

Fully agree ... BSA needs to take back the narrative. BSA is the best youth organization this country has ever seen and is now viewed negatively by the majority of the people (a recent poll).

 

The trouble is BSA also needs to get it's own house in order. Charter organizations who have different stances on these issues. And those charter orgs are signing up the leaders. Do you expect those charter orgs to apply BSA member standards? Do you expect charter orgs to go on witch hunts? To some degree, BSA needs to decide what they want to be? A religious organization for a specific sub-set of religions. A religious org for all religions? Or a civic organization? Or somewhere in-between.

 

I fully agree BSA needs to take back the narrative. But BSA also needs to do some house keeping and updating.

[skeptic]

Fred, while I know "some" polls recently have slanted slightly in that direction, I would wager that it was done in such a manner to encourage that slant. If a poll were devised that could be as neutral as possible, and not mention PC issues as part of the question in any way, I suspect the positive would still be substantially in the majority. How you take the political issues out of such a poll in today's society is a good question though, as we have relegated the large majority of the population into that "Silent" status, as they simply are too jaded or tired of the nastiness, so simply do not get involved. Just my view of course, but when only a third or so of possible voters even vote, and the poll makers have become so good at skewing the directions of such things both in wording and how they "select" their unbiased pools, we are very likely to not see a truly accurate response on many issues, not just this one.

 

Of course, you are right we need to do some serious top down adjustments in general. Most importantly though, we need to put the membership issue where it applies, which is in each unit and the hands of their CO.

[chrisking0997]

I presume young Mr Tessier, having found himself so disgusted with BSA for daring to not accept gay adults that he decided to find a way to stop BSA from getting major contributions that could benefit other youths, will return his eagle badge and never again associate himself with BSA such as using that accomplishment on job or college application forms? No?!? Oh, well I guess his outrage will only go so far.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Protecting your constitutional rights these days requires that you gain control of the public narrative' date=' and the BSA isn't very good at that, probably because as a group, we profess values of civility and courtesy that aren't often shared by those who wish to see us dissolved or irrevocably changed, and who don't play by the same rule book.[/quote']

 

Look, if you really believe anyone's actual constitutional rights are being violated, file a lawsuit.

 

Public support isn't a right.

[AZMike]

 

Look, if you really believe anyone's actual constitutional rights are being violated, file a lawsuit.

 

Public support isn't a right.

 

OR... I could attempt to influence public opinion on the topic the same way your side does. Corporations react to their consumers' opinions. If they don't hear a countervailing opinion than the secular one, it's because we as an organization are not doing our job.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

OR... I could attempt to influence public opinion on the topic the same way your side does.

 

Sure. But don't claim that someone's constitutional rights aren't being protected.

[AZMike]

Do you not think your constitutional rights as an atheist are in jeopardy, Merlyn?

 

Why do you not feel that mine are not as well? Why should I not claim that, when SCOTUS is about to rule on that very same issue?