Boycott Watch has written two
previous stories about the hypocrisy of the Indiana boycott after Indiana
passed their 'Religious Freedoms Act,' a law that mirrors Federal law designed
to protect people from being forced to violate their deeply held religious
convictions. While Boycott Watch is not taking a stance on the law, we are
commenting on the boycott as a result of it. Our first article,
Indiana Boycott is
both Selfish and Un-American talks about the problems with the boycott
itself, and our second article
Sharia-Compliant Apple
Boycotting Indiana - Sudden Rage for Doing Business in Saudi Arabia is
Disingenuous speaks about hypocrisy with ignoring the rest of the Apple
story. Both articles drew comments, not surprising along party lines, despite
Boycott Watch not taking sides.
 Thursday
April 2, 2015, a case was on the news that is disturbing for several reasons
and in particular along the lines of our concerns in the first article. In this
case a mom & pop store pizza restaurant, Memories Pizza in Walkerton,
Indiana had to close its doors after one of the owners said she could not cater
a wedding, resulting in death threats because the owner said she would not
cater a gay wedding. The simple fact is the store owners were setup for failure
because regardless of how they feel about the issue, they don't cater anyhow -
it's a small pizza shop not a catering company. Have you ever heard of a pizza
catering for a wedding? Have you ever heard of a pizza shop having a catering
or wedding hall? We at Boycott Watch never heard of it, and that is why we
believe it was a setup designed to create controversy that ran amok.
As a result of death threats, Memories Pizza was forced
to shut down for safety reasons, thus harming the livelihood of the family. In
response, one radio show host stated a crowd funding campaign that raised over
$300K for the family by Thursday night, and by Friday morning it hit over a
half million dollars. As such, the boycott against Indiana has not only become
divisive and destructive, but it already has a backlash to counter the boycott.
Boycott Watch has warned about political boycotts
on several occasions, resulting in the opposite affect many times, most notably
with the cases of Ford
and The Advocate magazine, and the
Chick-Fil-Acases.
"Boycotts are great consumer tools" said Fred Taub,
President of Boycott Watch. "However, when boycotts become political tools they
always have horrible results. Be it the BDS Arab boycott of Israel (See Fred Taub's book Boycotting
Peace) which is designed to destroy the entire State of Israel, or the
California
Proposition Eight boycott which was designed to stifle free speech, anytime
boycotts are used for political reasons the only result is pain, suffering and
the loss of freedom. Political boycotts are about one thing - telling people
they must comply with one point of view or else, and that is un-American. As
such, for the sake of unity and respect in this great nation, the Indiana
boycott must end now." |
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