The Hallmark skirmish

It was a battle won and lost at internet speed.  On December 14, the Hallmark Channel took down a few ads for the wedding-services website Zola which featured gay couples, following a campaign of protest by a fundie "organization" called "One Million Moms" (which, despite its name, seems to consist of a few AFA rabble-rousers with a fax machine and a few thousand Twitter followers).  Hard-core anti-gay Christians rejoiced that one media company was willing to "stand up to the gay agenda" -- that is, to cater to their need for the delusion of a world where nothing that bothers them is ever seen or allowed to exist.

Zola responded by pulling all its ads from Hallmark, and there was a substantial public backlash against the channel.  On December 16, after just two days, Hallmark repudiated its decision and announced that it would air the ads again.  The religionists were furious at the sudden evaporation of their triumph (do read the comments on that, if you're in a gloating mood).  One Million Moms called for a boycott of Hallmark.  Arch-bigot Bryan Fischer was whipped into a fine froth of outrage.  None of this will have any effect, and they know it.  Hallmark simply made a blunder under pressure and then corrected it -- they're not going to re-endorse that blunder now.

The corporate world's near-universal embrace of tolerance and acceptance in its advertising does not, of course, tell us what's in the hearts of corporate leaders, but that's not the point.  The point is that they know which way the cultural winds are blowing.  Their goal is to make money, and to that end, they need to be very aware of which groups they need to avoid offending, and which groups' fulminations they can safely ignore.  It's clear what conclusions they've drawn.

I don't know what the hard-core Christians are going to watch if even the Hallmark Channel is now too gay for them.  Maybe they can get Saudi Arabian TV via satellite?  The real problem with their dogged clinging to taboos which everyone else is increasingly abandoning is that it dooms them to an exhausting state of perpetual conflict with their environment.  Homosexuality and even gay marriage have pretty much become routine and unremarkable in mainstream culture.  The bigots' stance is like deciding to be outraged at the sight of doorknobs or trees -- they're setting themselves up for non-stop stress and agitation.  That's their choice, I suppose, but even their own younger generation doesn't seem eager to go on living that way.  The Hallmark skirmish may appear trivial, but it's an unmistakable signal to them that they've lost the war.