JC Penney Kicked The UnChristian Right in The Balls-2x
Have you followed the recent tussle between J. C. Penney and anti-gay groups? It’s pretty interesting. And it’s pretty suggestive of changed attitudes in this country toward gay men and lesbians.
It started earlier this year, after J. C. Penney hired Ellen DeGeneres, an outspoken advocate for gay rights and marriage equality, as its pitch woman. There was no indication then—and there is no reason to believe now—that she was chosen because she’s a lesbian. The company’s current CEO, Ron Johnson, told the Associated Press: “I think Ellen is someone we all trust. She’s loveable, likeable, honest and funny, but at her soul, we trust her.”
Nonetheless, her sexual orientation drew the ire and fire of ultra-conservative Christians, who publicly denounced the retailer and commenced a campaign to have DeGeneres replaced.
What did J. C. Penney do?
It reaffirmed its commitment to DeGeneres—and then, last month, at around the time of Mother’s Day, it doubled down and unveiled an ad with a same-sex couple: a pair of moms.
This further stoked the fury in particular of the group One Million Moms, an offshoot of the anti-gay American Family Association. One Million Moms urged a J. C. Penney boycott.
What did J. C. Penney do?
In advance of Father’s Day last weekend, it tripled down and unveiled an ad with another same-sex couple: two dads.
The so-called “religious right” bellows, and J. C. Penney shows them the back of its hand. Can you imagine such a scenario a decade ago?
I can’t, considering that J. C. Penney is not some boutique retailer whose stores are concentrated in big cities and whose clientele skews in the direction of urban sophisticates. It’s a chain based in Plano, Tex., with a largely suburban audience and plenty of stores in the heartland.
That it has made the calculation that there’s more to gain than lose by projecting an acceptance of gay and lesbian couples underscores how much this country has evolved and continues to evolve.
Polls aren’t the only, or even best, yardsticks of that. Corporate behavior says just as much, as I noted in a column last February about the way Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon all spoke up in support of same-sex marriage legislation in the state of Washington. That legislation passed the state legislature and was signed by the governor, but its implementation awaits the results of a voter referendum in the fall.
A side note on Starbucks: there’s an article on the chain’s renaissance in the current issue of Time magazine, which notes various ways in which the company is integrating social consciousness and efforts at jobs creation into its brand. At a time of broad scorn for corporations, the article is a reminder that some of them can and do take high roads and exhibit sensitivity to the communities around them, and even if these good deeds are done largely or exclusively because they’re good business, too, well, that doesn’t negate the potentially positive impact of those deeds.
Penney no doubt has motives other than principle. Could it be trying to distinguish itself from Wal-Mart, which enjoyed early success among Christian fundamentalists in the Sunbelt and is often seen in a conservative light?
Also, was Penney counting on—or grateful to realize it had succeeded in getting—a great deal of free publicity from its stance?
Is the use of same-sex couples in the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day ads just the most emphatic and efficient way the retailer could conceptualize of sending the message to consumers that Penney isn’t some musty dinosaur of a store, but a nimble enterprise of the moment? An interesting dynamic that has taken hold on several fronts is the celebration of marriage equality or other gay-rights concerns as a badge of sophistication. Last year, when I reported acolumn on why same-sex marriage had been legalized in a few seemingly unlikely countries like Portugal, it became clear that one reason was politicians’ and citizens’ investment in what that policy change said about their society’s modernity.
By FRANK BRUNI
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