Wal-Mart/Sam's Boycott

Jesus said "love your neighbour", and He put no reigns on it; he didn't discriminate between people.

You do!

Do you discriminate against those born black, or Muslim or just those born gay?

But then US treatment of Native Americans gives the lie to the Bill of Rights. America is full of humbug, and then wonders why the rest of the world despises her.

Sam

Sam,

Based on your use of punctuation and spelling, I'd suspect that you are a product of the US public school system. Your logic and non-sequitors are definately post-modern.

Let me ask you a question. Suppose Mark Spitz (famous swimmer from the 1972 Olympics) was drowning. Would it be OK if I said that he was drowning and tried to save him myself or engage others to aid him ? I mean I wouldn't want to hurt his esteem or offend him, after all, how would it look, a world class swimmer putting himself in position of nearly drowning.

America is indeed full of humbug, you got that right, but you got it right for the wrong reason. America is despised by the world because in recent times, we've exported borth control and abortion instead of the bounty of our farms. We've taught people all over the world lies when we should have been teaching the Truth. We've brought misery and death to so much of the world, when it was in our power to give consolation and comfort. We turned out back on the oppressed, and drove to the mall in our $60,000 automobiles. We watched as those who were in need sunk into the pit of Hell, but patted ourselves on the back because we put a dollar in the Salvation Army kettle.

I agree with Sam - Wal Mart is a public company and must do many of the things they are doing. Can you specifically tell me that their competitors, Target, K-Mart, Meijer's in the mid-west, etc. do not do the very same thing - just that Wal Mart is the target for you and your groups today?

In all honesty, if you want to boycott all manufacturers and service providers who do anything against conservative Christian beliefs, you will not be able to buy anything from anywhere save your neighborhood farmer. AT&T and MCI both support gays implicitly through their business practices, so who is your long distance provider? Disney and Nickelodeon both support gays through their businesses - what cartoons and movies will you watch?

Disney owns ABC and Disney allows gay days at its parks. No ABC or ESPN for you. NBC is owned by GE which has pro-gay rights policies, no NBC/Universal - with Disney and GE gone, there's half or more of your cable subscription package.

Pfizer has employees go to diversity workshops, much like those you state "a 2-day seminar to indoctrinate employees." Guess we should boycott Pfizer - hope you don't have high blood pressure or cholesterol.

Until and unless you're willing to live in a bubble, say like the Amish, you can not dis wal mart and not every other company for doing the same. Wal Mart gives our church money for outreach events - should we give that money back? Should the local Muslims boycott Wal Mart because they give to Christian churches and schools? Remember, I live in the highest density of Muslim people outside of the middle east.

More importantly, I seriously want you to do real research and prove to me that Target, Marshall Fiends, Sears, Penny's, etc. do not give to these same groups, belong to the same chambers of commerce and have the same programs for their executives that Wal Mart does on diversity and integration.

Want to dis my public school education like you did Sam? Man that was low and classless Eric. As Sam said, love your neighbor. You can judge his sin, but that is for the judgment day. Until then, your blog posts and comments like the ones here only serve to push those in need of salvation and change very far away from ever hearing the message. Good work. Post-Modern? Perhaps by your definition. Intelligent thought process by my definition.

Caleb, you said "Want to dis my public school education like you did Sam? Man that was low and classless Eric." I have no clue what you are talking about — what specifically did I do that was "low and classless" and how does it relate to dissing public school education? Was forwarding this AFA boycott "classless"? I am totally confused.

Should the Muslims boycott Wal-Mart? It doesn't really matter to me, I don't care. That's their prerogative. Frankly I didn't even know Wal-Mart gave to Christian schools and churches.

For the record neither my blood pressure medication nor my cholesterol medication is made by Pfizer. Even if I was forced to take Pfizer medication, nothing says I can't do a partial boycott. I reject the notion that one has to do a total boycott or be totally consistent across the board with all companies in order to take the moral high ground. I have absolutely no problem boycotting Wal-Mart because I am free to do so and not boycotting some other equally objectionable company because I am not. Maybe Wal-Mart will stop and raising the issue will cause the company I can't boycott to have second thoughts. I don't even feel I have to boycott a company I am able to boycott. To say I can't boycott Company X unless I also boycott Company Y that does exactly the same thing is like saying that if I have two equally dangerous enemies, I have to either fight both of them simultaneously or neither. There is such a thing as limited engagement and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

If you do not wish to participate in boycotts, the answer is simple: Don't. I am not going to judge you as you should not judge me for wanting to participate in them.

As for previous comments, loving your neighbor has nothing to do with tolerating injustice. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to "go and sin no more". In fact it was an act of love to do so.

What we are talking about here is not discriminating against people but laying down moral rules. Laws against drinking and drunk driving don't discriminate against alcoholics. Laws against theft don't discriminate against kleptomaniacs. Laws against murder don't discriminate against psychopaths, and laws against pedophilia don't discriminate against pedophiles. Discrimination pertains to who a person is in factors they cannot control. For example, a black person is just black, and they have no control over that. A disabled person has no control over that, either. But a gay person has control over what they do. And like the woman caught in adultery, Jesus says to go and sin no more.

This is not to say we shouldn't have the utmost compassion and understanding for those with same sex attraction. Doesn't mean we shouldn't show them love. It just means we should be firm that homosexual behavior is not morally acceptable, as Jesus said about adultery.

Eric did not "dis" anyone, it was me. Ad hominem attacks are a poor excuse for an argument.

Having said that, however, it is hard to accept an argument as a reasonable, intelligent position, when it is disquised.

As for "intelligent thought process", I very much think the jury is out on that one. Sam's argument looks to me like a visceral reaction of emotion. Was Eric's blog entry more severe than "Out of my sight you hypocrites", or "you
are full of decay and dead men's bones" ? Certainly not. Perhaps, if you studied more about what Jesus did and didn't say, you wouldn't be so quick to condemn.

Eric's article did not advocate discrimination at all. Rather he was simply exercising his constitutional free speech. It is a gross leap of logic to infer that he discriminates against anyone from what he wrote.

I posted a comment, but first it was rejected and then embargo'd by Eric and his servers and has yet to be posted. I will try again.

Hey Eric, what is your favorite book seller? Amazon.com? Aren't you a power-buyer at Amazon? Get preferred shipping and all that?

Per the linked article that claimed Wal Mart had all these gay and lesbian things on their WEB SITE (note their web business, esp books, in no way reflects their store products - they stock like "every" book, probably using the same generic database Amazon does)...

So I went to Amazon.com and typed L3SBIAN into the search box - only to find 3 pages of books and videos they stock. Including, but not limited to, "Wet: True L3sbian Sex Stories" and "The Lesbian Kama Sutra" Both those books sound quite interesting if you ask me from a purely sexual point of view! There were 43,000 book results for the word L3sbian at Amazon!

I then searched for a political hot topic of Gay Marriage. According to the AFA, Wal Mart stocks 26 books that fit the bill. Amazon on the other hand sells 2,346 as well as 13 magazine subscriptions. They do stock "What God Has Joined Together? : A Christian Case for Gay Marriage" I can buy it along with "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America" for only $20 - what a bargain!

So Eric, with your staunch decision to not support companies who support gay rights and such implicitly by stocking their products, will you stand now and boycott Amazon? Will you boycott Borders and Barnes & Noble 'cause they stock the same titles? Will you commit not and in front of everybody to not support even publishing houses that sell books on these topics? I challenge you to live this uber-clean life you ask us to live - because I don't think you can do it!

Note: I called Eric low and classless for his comments to Sam. I was wrong, that was another commenter who made those comments. Eric, I apologize. Pappy, your low and classless with the remarks about his perceived education or lack thereof.

It looks like Eric stirred up a little controversy with the "gay" issue again. Way to go Red. The best part of all this wonderful mess was when Caleb accused Eric in proxy of Pappy. (I don't know if I have seen an apology issued here, unless the quip about the server counts) What a wonderful circle of debate and confusion. Though I must add, (against my better nature) that Eric's response to Caleb's misassigned accusations was extremely cogent and most notably mild tempered for someone falsely accused, and on a polemic level was one of the best arguments I have ever heard in favor of prudent judgment and righteousness and against hypocrisy. Singning Off, The Worm

Hi, Caleb: you can blame me, not Eric, since I run the stblogs.org web server which blocked your comment attempt yesterday. Any comment that uses words like "gay" several times starts to resemble pr*n spam, and the spam filters in the web server rejected it. Sorry for the inconvenience. In the meantime, I adjusted the filter rules to be slightly more liberal.

As for the topic:

Please, everybody, stop guilt-tripping others about what boycotts you do or don't pursue.

St. Paul's tolerance for eating meat that had been slaughtered in pagan sacrifice rites (1 Cor 10: 25, 27), is enough to make clear that we are not obliged to shun trading with people who do something bad.

If you want to influence some company, or if you just want to make an act of witness, go ahead and buy or don't buy. But don't make the mistake of thinking you or others have a moral duty in the matter. I'm not going to get mad at people buying the $4 prescriptions at Wal-Mart.

RC,

Your words are well taken. It was never my intention to say that Christians "should" boycott Wal-Mart, or that it was wrong to shop there. True, I "urged" folks to do so, and gave my opinion on the matter, but I'll be honest I think no less of Christians who do not boycott. As Richard points out everyone's situation is different.

I do think it is fair game to advocate boycotts and share our opinions about why the boycotts are good though, as long as no moral judgments are implied. My goal here is merely to inform so that people who are so inclined can take action.

I boycott Walmart as much as I can. I probably only show up in their unhallowed warehouses once or twice a year if they are the option of last resort (ie. while camping). Boycotts are not a moral imperative but can be a very good idea and lead to necessary change and the attenuation or even elimination of evil. We need not disengage ourselves from an effort or activity because it has a limited connection to evil or our actions will not fully and universally address and confront all the evil in all circumstances at all times. If this were true our lives in general on earth are void or suspect and we better pack our bags for heaven, leave earth immediately, and hope God has not deadbolted the front door. The very essence of earthly life is a constant limited engagement with evil, in an attempt to eradicate it. Very rarely (ie. Christ's Passion) are we involved in an all-out all-consuming never-compromised battle with it. Unless we are ready to call it quits down here, we need be satisfied with partial successes and limited efforts for now. I believe boycotting Walmart and admonishing willful and deviant sexual behavior to be among the best and potentially most successful of these "modest" campaigns against evil. Worm

ooo Worm, for at last one sentence there you actually sounded like a church document in style.

Which sentence Redhead? The one about God bolting the front door. I bet you that was Benedict's favorite too. Worm

Worm,

"The very essence of earthly life is a constant limited engagement with evil, in an attempt to eradicate it."

Or maybe even, "We need not disengage ourselves from an effort or activity because it has a limited connection to evil or our actions will not fully and universally address and confront all the evil in all circumstances at all times."

Eric you do a great job with your blog! You bring out important issues. I agree that boycotting is not something that as christians we have an obligation to do. What we do have an obligation to do is to take a stand somehow against all the immoral actions happening in our world. I think it's so overwhelming that you can't expect a perfect system to deal with it so while it's true that other companies may do some of the same things as walmart walmart still does wrong and it's one place to start taking a stand because frankly it's influence is larger then a lot of those other companies. I think we just need to do something, if someone else takes a stand in another way great but it doesn't hurt to try to get other people to boycott the same company because how else will it be at all effective. My main issue with all of this though is that Eric's original point seemed to be about issues with WAlmart and the conversation seemed to turn into one more about homosexuality. It might have been a good idea to put in a few more of the negative aspects of walmart, make it broader then just a problem of supporting homosexuality.

Welcome Celeste; thanks for your compliments and thanks for dropping in and commenting!

I think you have some valid points. We have to start taking a stand somewhere, and to insist that somehow we have to take an all-or-nothing approach just isn't, in my mind, valid. Yes we have to put up with a certain amount of inconsistency but otherwise you'd never be able to stand up for what is wrong.

The issue of Wal-Mart and homosexuality was framed by the American Family Association and I was mostly conveying their message. I myself have other reasons to boycott them and I've explained those elsewhere, and I've argued about them with some in this forum, so to some degree I wanted to avoid a rathole in not going into my other reasons. I do not seem to have succeeded! Plus I was probably in a rush to post, and was happy that a post landed in my lap. But yes, you are right, there are other reasons to boycott Wal-Mart and perhaps it would have been illuminative (though perhaps heat-generating) to bring those up.