Sleepycatz

Hate Spam

This morning I received an unusual spam e-mail from the company I purchase my gardening supplies from. The e-mail was not urging me to seed my lawn, but to spread a type of fertilizer; to wit, it was requesting that I contact CBS to complain about its promotion of homosexuality. I immediately responded to the owner of outsidepride.com*, and informed him that I didn’t agree with his position and would not be doing anymore business with them.

So I wondered all day if I should post about this or not. The more I thought about it though, the more annoyed I became. Why was I annoyed though?

Was I upset that he had mixed his politics with his business? No. Our coffeehouse is makes no bones about its political leanings - we hold left wing meetings, show films, and our front window sports an “Impeach Bush” sign. Our business, unlike outsidepride, however, does not pretend to be neutral. Yet, their president was obviously driven to make his views known — though I would have suggested a blog, rather then the advertising list of his company, I cannot fault him for his desire to speak out.

Was it simply because Mr. Hake held a view diametrically opposed to my own? Yes, partially. I am well aware of my own desire to share opinions with people whom I agree with, then not. But that’s not the bulk of it.

The reason Mr Hake’s e-mail annoyed me was its tone and content. The fertilizer salesman issued an edict declaring that “homosexuality is morally wrong” and that we “can bring back the Christian heritage this country was founded on because it is, “In God We Trust.”" Aside from his poor knowledge of history (In God We Trust did not become the national motto until 1956 when it replaced E Pluribus Unum), Mr Hake’s makes use of the the same old, tired, bigoted, rhetoric: “There was Adam and then there was Eve, not Adam and Steve.” If this man is to be believed, he has tens of thousands of people subscribed to his mailing list — hard to believe, but possible — who he has called upon to spread intolerance and ignorance.

Mr Hake states he was prompted to call upon his cadre of lawn care commandos while watching television with his children when he was assaulted by two prime-time dramas featuring main characters who were homosexual. His children, of course, must be protected from the knowledge that gays and lesbians exist — lest they run off to become one or the other. Mr Hake states, “I am NOT trying to bash homosexuals and I am not a bigot”; he simply doesn’t want their existence acknowledged as anything other than as social deviants. When I here comments like this, I often believe that people like Mr Hake simply don’t like anyone unlike themselves being portrayed on television. And I wonder if this man would would have issued the same clarion call about an inter-racial couple 20 years ago. . . .

Nonetheless, I will no longer be doing business with Mr. Hake or his company.

\* This e-mail was sent to a bulk mailing list with a nulled return address. I find this very cowardly of the author. He made inflammatory statements which he refused to hear replies to. It was, however, easy enough to find his e-mail address (troyh@outsidepride.com) in order to send my response. But I doubt others went to the trouble. If you are a customer - please contact Mr. Hake and let him know how you feel — He expressed his feelings to you, you should return the favor

Update: Pam at Pandagon has also blogged on this, and a number of readers have commented on the Gay friendly name presented by outsidepride.com. BTW Pandagon is one of my frequent reads — always interesting stuff.

This entry was posted by steve on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 12:44 am and is filed under Religion, Misc. Ramblings, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.