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Posts Tagged ‘sexuality’

Dumping Starbucks

08 May

As a frequent customer and shareholder, I emailed Starbucks last week questioning information I had seen at DumpStarbucks.com , which claims that Starbucks is using their profits to lobby government to re-define marriage. Here’s the correspondence.

My wife and I frequent this Starbucks and several others. We are also shareholders. I’m at one location now and just saw a link to the “Dump Starbucks” website which reads in part:

On January 24th, 2012, Starbucks issued a memorandum declaring that same-sex marriage 'is core to who we are and what we value as a company.Starbucks also used its resources to participate in a legal case seeking to overturn a federal law declaring marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

We are very conscious of where our money goes and we do not support the overturning of laws in the pursuit of redefining millennia-old religious terminology. Is this information accurate? Is every purchase and every stock buy we make a contribution toward efforts to work against some of our core beliefs?

Thank you,

[SecondJon]

I received a response from Victor at Starbucks Customer Service:

Hello,Thank you for contacting Starbucks.

At Starbucks, we deeply respect the views of our customers and partners (employees) and recognize that there is genuine passion surrounding this topic. Starbucks has many constituents, and from time to time we will make decisions that are consistent with our values and heritage but may be inconsistent with the views of a particular group.

From our very earliest days, Starbucks has strived to create a company culture that puts our people first and treats everyone equitably. Our company has a lengthy history of leading on and supporting policies that promote equality and inclusion, and we are proud to be one of several leading Northwest employers that support of Washington State legislation recognizing marriage equality. We made this decision through the lens of humanity and our commitment to embracing diversity.

We have 200,000 people that work for Starbucks around the world and the equity of our brand has been defined by the relationship we have with our partners and the relationship they have with our customers. Put simply, the success we’ve enjoyed and the resulting shareholder value created are directly linked to the pride our partners have for the company they work for and their connection with the communities we serve.

If you have any further questions or concerns that I was unable to address, please feel free to let me know.

Sincerely,

Victor

customer service

2 points:

Victor wrote that “…the success we’ve enjoyed and the resulting shareholder value created” are because of things like lobbying to redefine marriage. If that were the case, why isn’t there a big sign by the register of every Starbucks declaring they’re opposed to the traditional definition of marriage, that “money from every purchase is used to lobby government to redefine marriage?” Because it’s a lie. They benefit only because they hide their activities and hide behind ambiguity.

“Recognizing marriage equality” sounds nice, but also very ambiguous. As G. K. Chesterton wrote in Eugenics and Other Evils (a book I recommend, available online free), “evil always takes advantage of ambiguity,” so I followed up with an email seeking clarity:

Hello Victor,

Thanks for your response. As a frequent purchaser of products and a shareholder, I’m writing back for clarification, recognizing the power of the money I have invested in Starbucks.

What do you mean by “marriage equality”? My understanding is that currently any man and any woman can get married. The restrictions aren’t based on anything except 1) only 2 people and 2) a man and a woman.

There have historically been efforts to redefine marriage to change the legal marrying age, allow polygamy, or even change from gender restriction to discrimination based on sexual orientation, something like “2 same-sex people can be married, but only if they have sex with each other,” seemingly replacing the gender restriction with a sexual orientation or sexual activity restriction.

I’m guessing you aren’t the one who came up with the policy or the one who decided the rational of Starbucks’ using of my investment money to support the policy, but can you give some clarity of what the policy is that is being supported?

Thanks,

[SecondJon],
Customer and Shareholder

This is the crux of the issue in my mind. Currently, marriage is not defined as “a contract a man and a woman who love each other,” nor as “A man and a woman who have sex.” Both of those situations are plentiful outside of marriage. Legally, marriage is a contract between a man and a woman, recognized and encouraged through some limited benefits, such as additional tax filing options, because since Aristotle philosophers and politicians have seen the importance of strong family units. Certainly our perspective of what makes a family is changing.

Perhaps in reaction to their own parents not living out their marriage commitment, increasing numbers of couples are living together, having and raising children together without ever sealing the relationship with the commitment of a marriage certificate; others have a slightly more sophisticated gang mentality, where they see their group of friends as their family. Obama’s re-election campaign, with their Life of Julia, family is defined as one’s self and the government. As Debra J. Saunders, in the San Fransisco Chronicle, pointed out:

Until her son goes to kindergarten, Julia’s cartoon world does not depict any males, except one, as shown in this quote: “Under President Obama: Julia decides to have a child.”

What’s the goal of re-defining the family away from the natural father-mother-children unit? That’s a long and depressing story. For today, my point is just that it’s happening.

Anyway, Starbucks replied:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Starbucks.

From the current perspective we are using, we are classifying marriage equality as involving 2 consenting adults.

Thanks again for writing us.  If you ever have any questions or concerns in the future, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Sincerely,

Nicholas

customer service

2 consenting adults? Starbucks is lobbying for incest? That’s weird.

Of course they aren’t lobbying for incest. They’re just continuing to be ambiguous.

People cry out “discrimination!” when traditional marriage is upheld, because marriage is defined as:

A commitment of certain things between a man and a women.

What’s the discrimination? There’s nothing in the definition of marriage that explores or restricts based on sexual orientation; there’s nothing in the definition of marriage that restricts based on anything other than gender. One man, one woman. They may not love each other, they may not ever sleep together. The only discrimination is the declaration:

men and women are different.

Why does this drive the Left crazy?

Efforts to re-define marriage are seeking a sort of definition like:

Marriage is a commitment between any two “consenting adults” as long as they have government-approved sexual behavior.

It’s strange. 2 siblings who want the financial benefits of marriage can’t get married if they’re heterosexual. But they could have the financial benefits if they’re homosexual.

Efforts to redefine marriage in favor of gay marriage introduce never before seen discrimination into the definition of marriage.

Efforts to redefine marriage in favor of gay marriage also seek to declare by fiat that these relationships are as beneficial to society as traditional marriage, without any historical reference.

There are so many things we like about Starbucks: the atmosphere; the employees; the employee benefits; double blended java chip frappuccinos with an added pump of white mocha. Unfortunately, they’re using the money we give as customers and shareholders to add to the effort to weaken marriage, the foundation of society as Aristotle pointed out. They say we should be okay with it because our shares have increased in value.

I’m sure many people can be bought that easily. But not us. We’ve stopped spending at Starbucks unless we need to meet with someone there, and we’re selling our shares.

 
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Posted in Culture, Politics

 

Keep the Democrats in my uterus?

13 Apr
Protest Sign: Keep your Boehner out of my uterus!

Protest Sign: Keep your Boehner out of my uterus!

The signs are back. Boehner, speaker of the house, wanted to remove federal funding of abortion from the budget as one of the cuts. The thinking goes something like this:

If someone wants to stop spending tax-payer dollars on killing an unborn yet scientifically distinct human life, it’s an invasion of someone else’s rights. They should not only have the right to take this human life, but you should pay for it through your taxes.

Where was the outburst of anger when Obama, Pelosi, and Reid rammed through the Obama health care mandate? This gave more government control over every aspect of health, where was the liberal outcry that government should stay out of our bodies?

Evidently, these protesters want Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi in their uterus and John Boehner out. They want legislation out of their uterus, but they want government-paid medical equipment in there scrubbing it. The signs seem like it’s a charge against big government intervention but the argument is the opposite. The sign would more accurately read: “Big government needs to be encouraging and funding abortion.” Statistically Planned Parenthood targets the poor, and a higher percentage of minorities are persuaded to abortion than whites. If the goal was to rid America of poor an brown folks, abortion would be the way to go. In fact, that’s why Planned Parenthood was started – to “to create a race of thoroughbreds” by rectifying “the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit.’” Perhaps the sign should more accurately read:

Big government needs to be encouraging and funding abortion for the lower class and people with brown skin.

I’ve likely severely offended many readers, particularly if they found this article from a web search. Abortion is a highly charged issue for a few reasons:

  1. For lack of measurable results, the feminist movement pinned their success to the legalization and subsequently federal funding of abortion. The entire feminist push in our culture became focused not on celebrating and valuing what women do, but in promoting abortion because it was a situation unique to women (making it a woman’s issue) and along with more freely available contraceptives, claimed to free up women to have consequence-free sex just like men.
  2. Abortion is highly personal and highly emotional. Women who find themselves considering the option are in a huge crisis where the options seem like death of the child or suicide of self. If they keep the child their life feels like it will be destroyed, and they may not feel much more hope for the baby. With the political and cultural push for and funding of abortion, it’s not surprising that women make this choice. We’re paying their doctors to do it!

 

Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote an article about pregnancy centers a few years ago. Most disturbing to me are the statistics that it’s overwhelmingly those with wealth that want funding for Planned Parenthood to be used for providing abortions for poorer Americans. The rich are paying for abortion to be promoted for the poor who don’t want it. Here’s an exerpt:

Those who provide alternatives to abortion believe that pregnancy is just one facet of the woman’s larger and more complex life. They believe she is not best served by treating her as merely a polluted uterus in need of a good scrubbing. Her life is tangled with the life of her child growing within, woven with the lives of the child’s father, with her own parents, friends and co-workers in a tapestry of lives. To remove the child is to cut a hole in the tapestry, by literally cutting into human flesh, tearing the child apart and tearing the mother’s heart. Unplanned pregnancy is not one problem, but a host of problems, great and small; pregnancy care providers try to solve them, one at a time.

Problem pregnancy is associated frequently with poverty, and Planned Parenthood selects the poorer neighborhoods; it is popularly believed that abortion is the best solution for the poor. At any rate, this belief is popular with those who are not poor. Polls regularly show that those with higher income levels are the most likely to endorse public funding of abortion, a gift that the recipients are not eager to accept. David Gergen, in an editorial written before he joined the Clinton administration, pointed out that a 1992 Reader’s Digest poll discovered “poorer Americans are the most opposed to federal funding [for abortion]. Among those earning less than $15,000 per year, opposition ran 63 to 32 percent against funding, while those making over $60,000 favored it by 57 to 41 percent.” Gergen asks, “Is Clinton listening to the people he wants to help?”

When people offer to help you by giving you money to eliminate your children, there’s an implied message that’s hard to miss. A friend who worked in an abortion referral center stocked a flier which explained how we could reduce our tax burden by helping poor women have abortions; one day a Hispanic client came in, slapped the flier on the counter, and hissed, “This is what you really think of us.” Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an enthusiastic eugenicist who wanted “to create a race of thoroughbreds” by rectifying “the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit.’” Planned Parenthood still has great admiration for Sanger, and president Faye Wattleton said a few years ago that the organization is “just following in the footsteps” of its founder.

Two brands of compassion, each offering what they think is best, but one gets the lion’s share of funding. While pregnancy care centers are a woman-to-woman operation, with funds raised in batches through bake sales and small grants, abortion is more lavishly supported from above. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the recipient of impressive grants from a long list of foundations and corporations, from Helena Rubenstein to the Pew Charitable Trusts to the New York Times Company. In a typical year, $125 million was received via Government grants and contracts. Planned Parenthood has fought for federal funding of abortion, and with the expanded provisions of the Hyde Amendment will now be able to charge more abortions to the public purse. Some states, as well, use taxpayer funds to underwrite abortions: in Maryland the bill totals $3 million per year. There is plenty of money from above to eliminate the children of the poor, and little need for bake-sale fundraising from below. The director of Planned Parenthood in Maryland is a well-mannered, sober Bostonian in a dark suit; it is hard to imagine him raising funds by poking his head in an office door, like Gloria’s volunteers, and asking how many want a pastrami sub.

 
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Posted in Culture, Politics, Reason

 

Why Breast Cancer (part 2)

12 Oct

Last night I asked the question:

Why does one disease that causes 2% of deaths every year get more attention than all other causes of death?

Breast cancer ribbons are on license plates, political buildings, food products, and apparently even football player uniforms. But it causes 2% of deaths. The leading cause of death kills 20 times as many people. That leading cause of death – that which kills more humans in America is abortion.

All things being equal, we should put our most effort into fighting the leading cause of death (abortion) – 20 times the effort we put into breast cancer awareness. For every breast cancer ribbon, there ought to be 15  heart disease ribbons. For every “I love boobies” bumper stickers, there should be two “I love people who don’t remember me” bumper stickers to promote Alzheimer’s disease which kills nearly twice as many people every year.

But we don’t – we don’t walk twenty miles against abortion for every one mile we walk against breast cancer.

So something is not equal. What are the factors?

Last night I speculated that one factor was the sexualization of culture. It’s about breasts, so we care. I also wrote that we wrongly tend to get our self-image and confidence as a man or woman based on our physical appearances, and for a disease to attack one very clear symbol of being a woman is for the disease to attack our frail self-view.

But I missed what may be the biggest factor.

This morning a friend read my blog post on Facebook and wrote

…Cancer also moves people because it is scary – there may be some ways to reduce your risk, but it is not nearly as preventable as say heart disease which is the #1 killer. We know that diet, exercise, maintenance of an appropriate BMI, etc..will drastically reduce risk of heart disease and stroke but there is no such “simple” formula for breast cancer prevention. It affects women of all ages, races, socioeconomic status and is very likely to significantly affect one of your loved ones (and mine)…

By the numbers, we all have more loved ones affected by heart disease and other killers than breast cancer, but about what makes it different from other diseases, I think she was right. Cancer is different than many diseases because they can be prevented. It’s a sneaky indiscriminate killer. It’s not a gang member that shoots you because you’re in the wrong part of town late at night. Like the flu and Alzheimer’s disease, it’s the killer that breaks into your home at night when you’re sleeping. These non-preventable diseases are scarier (though the argument could be made that it’s the preventable ones that need more awareness so people can prevent them).

Breast cancer can affect any adult woman, regardless of many factors, including health. It’s not a “fatty disease,” which could have been prevented or limited if someone kept themselves more attractive. It’s not a disease that only affects old people.

So why do we care more about deaths caused by breast cancer than anything else, including other non-preventable diseases like Alzheimer’s and the flu? From this perspective, because we value the lives of the people affected more than we value the lives of those killed by other causes. We value the lives of pretty young women more than the lives of fat old men.

The message we communicate by the emphasis on breast cancer is thus:

  • Your life is more valuable if you are a woman, and less valuable if you are a man.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are young, and less valuable if you are old.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are skinny, and less valuable if you are overweight.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are a mother, and less valuable if you are a father.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are an adult, and less valuable if you are aren’t born yet.

Perhaps this is incorrect – leave a comment and let me know so we can figure out this riddle: why does the 2% killer get more attention than everything else.

Again – I’m not downplaying breast cancer, or breast cancer awareness. I’m just trying to figure out the disproportionate attention which seems to communicate that the 2% of people who die of breast cancer are more significant than the other 98% of humans who die every year.

 
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Posted in Culture, Reason

 

Our obsession with breasts: breast cancer month

11 Oct

Breast cancer is not the number one killer in America. It is not the number one killer of women.

All cancers, as a category, are the #3 killer, below heart disease, which is #2. But breast cancer kills less people than stroke (cardiovascular disease), chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents (unintentional injuries), Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, nephritis-nephrotic syndrome-and-nephrosis, and even the flu, according to the CDC.

Despite all of these other causes of death killing more of our loved ones than breast cancer, it’s the disease that gets the most attention. The capital building here in Denver has a big pink ribbon on it, as do cars on the street, and food packaging in every grocery store.

I’m not questioning people’s desire to have a cure for diseases. I’m questioning why one disease trumps so many others which together are 50 times as fatal.

It seems that this is our proud-as-a-peacock display of the objectification of women. We care more about breast cancer, even though it’s only the cause of 2% of deaths in America, because it’s about breasts. Promotional material has gotten more honest, at least, like the “boobies” bumper sticker I took a photo of recently. [Post continues below.]

"Boobies" bumper sticker

It’s understandable that we use our bodies as part of our self worth, and that’s another reason it’s significant. We value our bodies to the level of idolatry, and judge our self-worth as men and women by things that set us apart from each other, particularly in sexual ways. This self-view is something Christians are supposed to fight against as it is contrary to what the Bible teaches. Jesus taught that one’s life is more important than any individual body part (Matthew 5:29-30,6:25), and Paul taught that the marks of true femininity was not in appearance, but in character and good deeds (1 Timothy 2:8-10). (The same is true of men, who are supposed to stand out spiritually and in prayer, lifting holy hands in praying for their authorities without anger or disputing.)

Obviously men like breasts for primal, cultural, and primarily sexual reasons as well. Perhaps that really is what it all comes down to for many people – we support breast cancer research more than anything else because heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t make us think of sex.

I hope we have a cure for breast cancer soon. I also hope we have a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, diabetes, and other killers. I am troubled that a disease that ranks so low on the list has taken over because the over-sexualization  of our culture.

Please leave comments if there’s reasons I’m unaware of that this 2% killer trumps all others. I’d be interested to learn the answer to this riddle.

Oh – and what is the number one killer in America? Abortion is the number one killer in America. For every 1 woman that dies from breast cancer, 20 babies are aborted – and this only includes legal abortions that are are reported. Twenty.

 
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Posted in Culture, Reason