It is always a shock when Bill O’Reilly is even close to being right on an issue, kind of a kin to walking up to a horse and have it ask you the time of day. Still when he is headed in the right direction we probably ought to encourage that.
Which brings us to the issue of the “Million Moms” and their attempt to get J.C. Penny to cancel their contract with Ellen DeGeneres as their new spokesperson. As you probably know the Million Mom’s have a problem with Ms. DeGeneres because she happens to be gay and is married to one of the most gorgeous women in the world, Portia de Rossi (they are probably not pissed that de Rossi is gorgeous, but with religious bigotry, who knows?).
Last night O’Reilly tried to have one of the Million Mom’s on his show but somehow they couldn’t find a single one that was willing to come on. So instead he got another anti-gay bigot, Sandy Rios, to come on and try to defend the position that a gay person should not be representing J.C. Penny. You can watch the video below.
Bill-O is moderately strong on this comparing the actions of Million Mom’s to that of McCarthyism, saying that they are trying to keep DeGeneres from working just because of her “lifestyle” (even when doing something half-way right Bill-O can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that sexuality is not a choice).
Rios (who I just can't help thinking looks like a female Joker from Batman) tried to defend the Million Mon’s by saying:
"The problem is that Ellen DeGeneres has chosen to act out her lesbian lifestyle, marry her partner, and what that represents...we are seeing homosexuality so embedded in our culture in alarming ways”
O’Reilly wasn’t buying and they went back and forth about it, but it was a pretty clear rebuke of these folks and their tactic. Sadly O’Reilly really missed the business issue at the core of this whole thing.
J.C. Penny’s is a business, they want to be sure to have a long term relationship with their customers and they, unlike most conservatives on this issue, can read the polling. The newest Pew poll on this issue shows that Millennials (folk born after 1980) favor marriage equality by 64%.
These folks are the future market for J.C. Penny, they are going to be around a lot longer than those who vehemently oppose marriage equality and they are a much large group. So, that is where the money is.
It is really that simple, Ellen is an incredibly likeable person. She is sunny and funny and goofy and, yes, just happens to also be gay and married. The last two are so much less important to younger shopper as to be a non-issue. As they should be.
So when the retail giant was looking for a spokesperson, they looked around and found someone that fit the image they were looking for. It is only the religion inspired bigotry of a few that has made this an issue at all.
What I also find interesting about this is the fact that groups like the Million Mom’s don’t have people willing to go on even a very friendly network like Fox “News” to put a face on their bigotry.
This is part of a trend where these bigots are getting less and less support for their irrational hatred of gay citizens and so are less and less willing to be seen in public supporting these kinds of attacks. I wish I could say that this is how bigotry dies, but like racial bigotry, the reality is that it is just how it goes underground.
Still with folks like O’Reilly starting to make the point that this kind of thing is wrong (even if he is doing it from the wrong point of view) and the more crouched and defensive posture of those who insist on this bigotry in the name of their religion, there is probably a day coming, fairly soon, when it will be a settled issue that a gay citizen is a citizen first and gay somewhere low on the list.
That will be a very good day and can’t come soon enough for me.
The floor is yours.