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Hate and Discrimination

Linda Harvey: Lady Gaga, Office Depot Partnership 'Endangers the Welfare of Children'

Last week, we noted that despite their feigned shock at gay rights’ groups Chick-fil-A boycott, Religious Right groups boycott companies all the time, and today, Mission America president Linda Harvey added her name to a pressure campaign against Office Depot backed by the American Family Association and the Florida Family Association, protesting the chain’s partnership with Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation. According to Harvey, selling products with messages like “Be Brave,” “Be Kind” and “Be Yourself” is a “deceptive” scheme “to link children to homosexuality, which is deeply wrong.” She urged listeners to boycott Office Depot until it stops “corrupting our kids” by “misleading kids to accept this harmful behavior.”

There’s another business parents need to avoid these days, especially for back to school shopping. Office Depot has decided to team up with Lady Gaga and her new pro-homosexual, non-profit group. Office Depot will be pushing rainbow colored products with messages that encourage the deviance of homosexuality while giving untruthful information to kids. Just to give some background, Lady Gaga has become quite a supporter of the homosexual political agenda, including the many ways children and teens are being deceived about these lifestyles. She jumped on board in a big way with a song called Born This Way and then followed up by starting the Born This Way Foundation. The goal, the group’s website says, is to ‘foster a more accepting society, where differences are embraced and individuality is celebrated. The Foundation is dedicated to creating a safe community that helps connect young people with the skills and opportunities they need to build a kinder, braver world.’ It sounds noble but the reality is that they want to link children to homosexuality, which is deeply wrong.

The American Family Association is asking people to call and email Office Depot and tell them to ‘leave our kids alone.’ I agree and I would add one more thing. Office Depot needs to stop trying to soft sell harmful, deviant behavior, and also stop using deceptive terms like ‘safe’ and ‘brave’ in connection to homosexuality. These kids are not victims, they all deserve respectful guidance away from these behaviors and people who oppose homosexuality are not unsupportive. Office Depot is implying that it’s brave to openly identify as homosexual: this is not simply untrue; it’s an idea that endangers the welfare of children. The campaign also implies that if kids don’t support their peers who are involved in homosexual behavior, they contribute to an unsafe environment and aren’t brave like the ones who do.

This is the worst kind of propaganda: pointing kids towards deviance and immorality while calling it courageous and brave. Parents need to keep kids away from such nonsense. Here’s where we stand: Mission America supports punishment for all incidents of bullying, period, for all reasons; at the same time, we absolutely reject the false and discriminatory idea that traditional morality somehow causes bullying. This is about as valid as saying that healthy nutrition programs cause the bullying incidents unleashed on kids who are overweight. No, troubled kids are the ones who bully and these incidents need to be punished when they happen.

Let’s expose the deceptive idea these people would lead kids to, and that is that schools should exercise viewpoint discrimination against Christians and conservatives, it’s deceptive hysteria to promote an agenda, one that is corrupting our kids. No one is born homosexual, there’s no credible evidence for this. Homosexuality continues to be unnatural behavior, no matter how many celebrities support it…. Tell [Office Depot] to stop misleading kids to accept this harmful behavior and be sure to shop for back to school items at a different store.