As reported by Alex Blaze several weeks ago, William Bolthouse, founder and 43% owner of Bolthouse Farms, a farm in California that provides organic juices, lemonades, and smoothies to places like Whole Foods and other organic market places, has just recently given a donation of $100,000 to proponents of a campaign to strip California couples of the right to marry.
We know that many progressive people are concerned about what they put in their bodies, and we wanted to let you and your friends know that organic juice you maybe enjoying could be helping to strip the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of the right to marry in California.
Now company spokespeople for Bolthouse Farms will iterate that they do not donate directly to any campaigns. But their owner, William Bolthouse, uses the profits from the sales of their organic drinks to fund his noxious political views. In addition to funding the initiative to strip Californians of their marriage rights, his foundation, the Bolthouse Foundation, is a major donor to the Alliance Defense Fund, the right's response to the ACLU.
Now we know that companies and their owners can spend their money however they would like, but that doesn't mean that we have to support them by using our hard earned dollars to purchase their products, at a price of our own rights.
Please take a moment and let Bolthouse Farms and their distributors know that you will no longer be purchasing thier organic products, because even though they are organic, they come with some nasty side effects.
Speak out now!
(Visit Pride at Work's website for more information about how to get involved and speak out. Read Alex's original post for more background.)
Visit The Bilerico Project for daily queer commentary. This diary was written by Jeremy Bishop, executive director of Pride at Work, the AFL-CIO LGBT constituency group.