Fighting back when they already own the government

I love talking with Teddy.  His thoughts on the Target situation:

It is so disappointing though, they were the anti-walmart and now they are no better than the Arkansas asshats.  Corporations in this country seem hell-bent on proving that they are, in fact, evil.

When commercial organizations support political or ideological causes antithetical to your very being, there is only one way to successfully deal with it.

When they perceive that their cost of business is higher than supporting the causes which try to kill or limit you, coupled with an awareness of tens of thousands of individual communicated decisions to purchase elsewhere, they'll change.

So every time you purchase something you could have or would have purchased at Target, send the local store a note that informs them of how much business they lost.

For those OCD souls among us, follow my lead in sending your local Target store a summary of all the money you spent there in the last calendar year and notify them that next year, the total will be zero.

Teddy reminded me that he mostly shops at Amazon online, and  I have been noticing my own tendency to do the same.  I wonder if Jeff Bezos could consider opening up an online pharmacy by mail....

"HEY JEFF!"

My email to Target's CEO

I've been a Target customer, loyal beyond reason, for twenty-nine years.

I deeply regret that Target management has concluded that their best business strategy is to promote political entities that advocate me personally having no human rights, that I be done violent death and be relegated to a sub-human existence.

I believe that you must understand I can no longer support Target in any way with my recommendations, my time nor my money. 

I will be providing both the store manager and the pharmacist with the attached letter next week when I advise them in person that I am transferring my prescriptions to a commercial enterprise that does not actively and openly seek my person and my life being damaged, and that I will never be back.

Hey, Conservatives -

The other day, Eric from Vancouver was touting his local MP (that's what the Canuckistanians call their Congresscritters) web page. He linked me to her website, and there occupying all of the up front real estate, was a story that told of the MP's informing the Border Security guys to watch for Americans coming across the border to protest in Vancouver at a Gay Pride event.

Seems in Canada it's a crime to incent hatred or discrimination toward other groups.

The few people in the US that I spoke to about this (outside the City and County of San Francisco, that is) thought that was "stupid."

Turns out there's a completely valid reason for this. From a diarist at Daily Kos:

The Psychological Harm of Anti-Gay Initiatives
by RfrancisR
Sun Nov 30, 2008 at 08:13:16 AM PST

Been feeling angry, fearful, sad, or depressed, lately? I have. I remember the joy I felt on election night, and how that joy came crashing down when I woke up the next morning to the reality of California's Prop 8 having passed. It blew me away. I had been talking to my sister in the weeks leading up to the vote of possibly moving out there with her so that me and my boyfriend of nearly nineteen years could get married. To straight people out there, imagine being with your boyfriend or girlfriend for nineteen years. Who has a boyfriend that long? Imagine never being able to call, by law, your boyfriend or girlfriend your spouse, and imagine that was the case because people who hated you spend millions to tell your neighbors every lie in the book about you.

Dr Gregory Herek, one of the foremost experts on the issue of sexual minorities, has posted a wonderful blog documenting the very real psychological harm of anti-gay ballot initiatives.

* RfrancisR's diary :: ::
*

Evidence has documented so called minority stress, the additional psychological stress that is caused by being an out-group in society. Now, Herek points us to research that proves that vicious anti-gay campaigns ran to help pass anti-gay measures do severe psychological harm to the GLBT community tantamount to PTSD. It's not merely the loss of a legal recognition of a marriage. It is brutal psychological warfare against gays and lesbians.

I can’t do justice to Dr. Russell’s book-length account here, especially her in-depth descriptions of the stories related by research participants. But one of her important findings was that a substantial segment of the sample reported many symptoms that are commonly associated with depression, anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and they perceived that these symptoms were a direct result of having lived through the months of antigay campaigning.

Through Internet surveys, the researchers used standard mental health measures to assess the current well-being of more than 1500 lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults. For example, respondents were asked whether they had recently experienced various symptoms of depression, such as having difficulty sleeping or concentrating, feeling fearful or hopeless, and not being able to “get going.” They were also asked about the extent to which they were experiencing negative emotions, such as fear, irritability, hostility, and nervousness.

587 participants completed two versions of the questionnaires — one in the spring of 2006 and a second one about 6 months later, shortly after the November elections. Nearly one thousand others completed the post-election questionnaire, but not the pre-election survey.

The researchers sorted participants into two groups — those living in a state with an anti-marriage amendment on the 2006 November ballot and those in other states. Not surprisingly, compared to residents of other states, residents of the amendment-campaign states reported encountering a larger number of antigay messages in the mass media and in day-to-day conversations. Moreover, comparison of the November questionnaires with those administered six months earlier revealed that the number of encounters with negative messages had increased significantly in the amendment states but not in the other states.

When the researchers examined the mental health data, they found that residents of the states where an antigay campaign had just been waged reported higher levels of stress, more negative emotions, and more symptoms of depression than did respondents who lived elsewhere. Comparison of the pre-election and post-election questionnaires revealed that levels of psychological distress had increased significantly among residents of states with a marriage amendment on the ballot, but not among residents of other states.

In sum, the findings of Dr. Rostosky’s group support and extend those of Dr. Russell’s research team. By examining the experiences of sexual minority adults residing in different states, and by comparing scores on mental health measures before and after the statewide antigay campaigns, they provide good evidence that marriage amendment campaigns are harmful to the mental health of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals.

BeyondHomophobia.com

I remember my civics class lessons on Brown v Board of Education. It was the top psychological research of the day that helped to make the case that segregation was a moral evil. The research, then, proved the psychological harm caused by segregation. Unequivocally, then separate could never be equal. I hope those challenging anti-gay laws, such as Prop 8 can use this new research effectively to help convince the courts of the harm such laws and initiatives do to good people.

For a really good time this December 1st, read the comments.