As the Graham Cookie Goes So Does Gay Rights
A far-fetched tweak of an old political cliche? I'm not so sure.
Honey Maid recently released an ad that showed, among other things, same-sex parents and their kids enjoying the company's graham crackers. This sparked a backlash among some conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage.
Honey Maid responded to the backlash by going all in on the issue. The company hired two artists to take printed copies of the complaints and do something with them for a second ad.
The artists rolled the complaints into tubes and joined the tubes together to spell out "Love." They then surrounded "Love" with rolled-up copies of the positive responses, so many that the positive tubes quickly engulfed the complaints.
The message was simple: This argument is over.
What's telling is that the message didn't come from a gay rights activist or even a politician. It came from a major corporation, as Honey Maid is owned by snack giant Mondelez International Inc. This wasn't the people speaking; this was the market speaking, and the market decisively took a side.
That's what happened last week when Brendan Eich stepped down as CEO of Mozilla Corp., which created the Firefox Web browser. News that Eich had donated $1,000 to a group opposed to same-sex marriage in 2008 sparked a firestorm of criticism.
The dating service OKCupid encouraged its customers not to access the company's site via Firefox, and many in the tech community voiced concerns about how Eich's personal beliefs might reflect on Mozilla.
There's no sign Eich's opinion about marriage ever came into play in his business life. But as we know from the Supreme Court, political contributions are a form of free speech, and Eich spoke with his $1,000. Once the market got wind of what Eich's money said, the market replied — it said Eich is bad for business and he must go.
And so he went.
Earlier this year, an Arizona bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gay and lesbian customers was vetoed by Gov. Jan Brewer. The veto came after a number of state businesses and the National Football League — which could have yanked next year's Super Bowl out of Arizona — sharply criticized the bill.
Again, the market spoke. And if it continues speaking this way, you have to wonder about the national viability of any company or public figure opposed to marriage equality.
Should a graham cracker ad prove to be a bellwether, it could spell trouble for a political party that has opposition to gay marriage written into its platform.
Republican lawmakers will do fine when it comes to congressional elections, where voters tend to be sewn off in ideological pockets. Most analysts predict this year's midterm elections will bring a significant jump in GOP control.
But what happens in a presidential election?
Could Barack Obama — who conveniently "evolved" on the issue of gay marriage between his first and second term — be the first president to embrace marriage equality and the last president to oppose it?
"It strikes me as a real juggling act for the Republicans," said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University and an expert on presidential politics and elections. "The core of the party is still very opposed to same-sex marriage. So if you speak out strongly against same-sex marriage in an effort to get the nomination, that issue could come back to haunt you in the general election."
Geer said he has been amazed at how swiftly public opinion on the issue has shifted, a fact that has made it hard for Republican political candidates — many of whom "cut their teeth in the '90s on opposition to gay rights" — to change course.
"The minimum that is demanded now is that if somebody is opposed to same-sex marriage, they have to find a way to do it that shows tolerance and support, not just across-the-board intolerance on this matter," Geer said. "They have to find some way to skirt that. Maybe they have very prominent people in their campaign who are gay. But that's not an easy cat to skin. If the Republican nomination process is such that an ardently anti-gay candidate rises up, that's going to really crimp the Republicans' chances in the national election."
Elections are not generally won or lost on a single issue. But views on gay marriage, for many voters and particularly for younger ones, speak to the broader issue of tolerance.
In the GOP's own "autopsy" after the 2012 election, this sentence appears repeatedly: "The Republican Party is one of tolerance and respect, and we need to ensure that the tone of our message is always reflective of these core principles."
The party would be wise to heed that autopsy's advice. Because if a graham cracker company is taking disdain for same-sex marriage and rolling it into a message of love, the market is speaking.
And what it’s saying is: "As the graham cracker industry goes, so goes the nation."
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