Speedway Becomes Battleground Over Homosexual Rights
“By Kim Cuneo
The Charlotte World
May 28, 2000
Charlotte – If you were at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway on May 28th, you might have witnessed the latest skirmish in the war between homosexual rights activists and their advocates in corporate America and America’s families.
The Virginia-based Family Policy Network (FPN) contracted an airplane to fly a banner over race fans at the speedway that read, “BUD: STOP PROMOTING THE GAY AGENDA – GAYBEER.COM.”
The website identified in the banner contains the details of Anheuser-Busch’s pro-homosexual activities, including pictures from Bud-sponsored Folsom Street Fair, an annual sadomasochism festival in San Francisco, and Bud Light’s pro-homosexual magazine ads.
“When I think of the average Anheuser-Busch customer, I think of someone who listens to country music or has a favorite race car driver,” said FPN president Joe Glover. “It’s obvious that when you look at their average customer, compared to the group they’re endorsing, they don’t want their right hand to know what their left hand is doing. We want to make sure that it does.”
FPN has flown the gaybeer.com banner at other racetrack locations, including Atlanta, Darlington, Martinsville and Daytona, as well as distributing flyers at races.
“I’m not sure what [Anheuser-Busch’s] purpose is, but they are on an aggressive crusade, a campaign to change the culture with regards to homosexuality,” Glover said. “The average homosexual dies at 42. Anheuser-Busch, knowing this, exploits this group knowingly. They do it for the sake of money.
“I’m a big proponent of free market principles,” he said. “But when a company exploits people for profit, it’s wrong. It’s greed. And it should be exposed.”
FPN has received responses from all over the country. Glover said he has gotten tons of email from people who say they won’t drink Bud anymore.
“We’ve gotten emails that say ‘We drank nothing but Bud for 20 years, but now we won’t touch it,’” Glover said. “The thing we’ve run across most often is that people can’t believe it, they say, ‘are you sure?’”
But with all these responses has been a fair share of hate mail. Glover said the day after the banner flew at Martinsville, a homosexual wrote and said, “If there is such a place as hell, you should be the first one to go there.”
“It’s amazing the venom that these people have for us, doing what we’re doing,” Glover said. “On our site, there’s not one disparaging remark, it’s a loving presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It expresses frustration with Anheuser-Busch, but there’s not one single personal attack.”
A lesbian reporter from New England’s largest homosexual newspaper, Bay Windows, interviewed Glover. He said the reporter couldn’t understand why FPN was taking action against Anheuser-Busch.
“I asked her if she thought it was a good idea for Anheuser-Busch to sponsor the Boston street fair — a sadomasochist festival where they let homosexuals beat others until they’re bruised and bleeding, and then another puts his foot on their back to show dominance— was this healthy?” Glover said. “And she said, ‘No, I don’t, I think that’s sick.’
“[Folsom Street Fair] is ultimate acts of depravity, and Anheuser-Busch is a national sponsor,” he said. “And for a lesbian writer to agree that Anheuser-Busch is sponsoring the worst elements, it tells me there is no depth of depravity Anheuser-Busch will not go to make another buck, and it’s wrong.”
Glover said Anheuser-Busch’s response, when questioned about sponsoring the Folson Street Fair, was “because of the benefits it brings to the San Francisco community.”
For Glover, there are two different homosexual rights issues, one being the companies that have given in to the pressure of homosexual rights, and the second issue being companies that actually promote and endorse a homosexual lifestyle.
“Anheuser-Busch could have an ad in a homosexual magazine, but they put an endorsement,” Glover said. He compared this to an ad that would never be featured in a American Automobile Association (AAA) magazine: a picture of a man drinking a beer while driving, with the speedometer reading 90 miles per hour.
“That’s not only illegal, but drunk driving kills, and so does sodomy,” FPN’s president said. “How many elderly homosexuals do you know?
“It would be morally wrong to stand by an do nothing,” Glover said. “We’re not just picking on Anheuser-Busch, we’re sharing the gospel.”
Other businesses courting the homosexual market include Office Max, Alamo rental cars, Subaru, and Absolut vodka. Experts say the Internet is also helping the trend along by making it easier for advertisers to target consumers who frequent gay Web sites.
Early statistics on the use of gay-oriented sites show a trend that advertisers like. The two leading sites, Gay.com and PlanetOut, attracted more than 700,000 people, combined, in February, according to Media Metrix, a research firm that tracks Internet usage. Gay.com says its own research puts its monthly visitor count in the millions.
The sites are proving to be popular because they allow even closeted homosexual people to socialize, check information archives and even shop “without fear of repercussions from the guy at the hardware store, the guy at the bank or even the people they see at church on Sunday,” said Jeffrey Newman, chief operating officer of gfn.com, the Gay Financial Network, a new investing website.
Recent surveys conducted by Greenfield Online, a Connecticut-based Internet research company, found that the average annual homosexual household income is $57,000, compared with an overall household average of $53,000.
The income and Web numbers have been enough to get the attention of corporations and businesses that find this a lucrative market.
Bob Witeck, partner in Washington-based Witeck-Combs Communications, which tries to help companies reach gay consumers, said an increasing comfort with homosexual issues has caused members of the religious right to throw up their hands.
“Many people —even deeply conservative people— will say ‘It’s just business,’” said Witeck, whose clients include Coors Brewing Co. and American Airlines.
But not all conservative Christians are bowing in to the pressure from homosexual activists.
Julie Millam, executive director of the Christian Coalition of Montana, spoke in opposition to the request to offer homosexual benefits to University of Montana employees’ partners, which the Board of Regents voted to deny.
Millam warned against the dangers of accepting unnatural relationships that could include “any imaginable combination of people.”
She said that homosexuality is a perversion and as such should not be a state-sponsored activity.
Similarly, Bob Lemieux, president of the DADS Foundation, a Kalamazoo, Mich., family values group, recently denounced the city for becoming the second in Michigan to let gay employees cover their partner under health benefits. He said the policy violates state laws against sodomy.
“It’s time the conservative community in Kalamazoo and Kalamazoo County found a backbone and stand up against this kind of nonsense, this kind of perversity,” Lemieux said.
“We are letting a vocal minority run this community,” he said.
RELATED LINKS:
FPN Website on Anheuser-Busch’s promotion of homosexuality: www.gaybeer.com
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11/17/99: FPN’s attack on A-B’s pro-gay activism
FPN Release, 2/21/00: Budweiser feels the heat at Daytona 500
FPN Release, 3/12/00: “”Race for the Family”” confronts Bud before race in Atlanta
FPN Release, 5/25/00: Bud “”Outed”” in Charlotte for promoting homosexuality
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