One Million Moms has struck against same-sex love again. Hopefully this will go as well as their past objections.
The website, an offshoot of the American Family Association, shares the goals of its parent nonprofit in promoting conservative Christian ideals. They protest against everything they deem non-Christian, and their actions have become so bad that they have been listed as a hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.
OMM is currently protesting TV shows like "GCB" and "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23," and has previously taken up arms against "Glee," "Two and a Half Men," "Skins," "Secret Life of the American Teenager" and many other shows, according to the victories section on their webpage. They have a history of protesting shows and commercials they deem offensive. Anything not completely straight-laced sends them into a furious frenzy of emailing whoever they can to make the bad, scary things go away.
OMM made big headlines in February when protesting JCPenney's decision to hire Ellen DeGeneres as the company's new spokesperson. OMM's website states, "Their marketing strategy is to help families shop and receive a good value for their money,” and that “DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store.”
This protest backfired when DeGeneres and JCPenney got a huge amount of support from the GLBT community and allies. According to TheWrap.com, OMM is still claiming a small victory in the protest, as many of its members have vowed to no longer shop at JCPenney while DeGeneres works for them.
The group's most recent headline-making outburst regards an Urban Outfitters'ad depicting two young women sharing a kiss. The kiss is fairly tame — maybe a two on a scale of 1-10 — but that has not stopped OMM from issuing a call to arms. The website states the groups demands: that the ad be pulled, that future ads of similar homosexual composition be banned, and an apology be issued to consumers for the"offensive and inappropriate"ad.
This is where Urban Outfitters needs to stand up for what is right. According to the Mirror, this is not the first time Urban Outfitters has been involved in an issue relating to gay rights.
In 2008, the company was forced to pull a t-shirt that stated"I support same-sex marriage"from stores in California. In order to avoid a similar situation, those in charge at Urban Outfitters need to tell OMM that the ad will not be pulled. If future ads of the kind are run, those that find them offensive can simply choose to not shop at Urban Outfitters anymore. Like JCPenney, they are going to win a lot more customers than they will lose by doing so.
One Million Moms needs to understand that they are not allowed to parent everyone they can. They have a right to protect their own children from things they do not want them to see, but parental rights do not extend outside your immediate family. If you do not want your son or daughter seeing two young women kissing, or the nudity and blasphemy in"GCB,"then it is up to you to make sure your kids do not see that. It is not up to the network or the media to parent your kid. There are parents out there who are fine with that kind of stuff, and it is their right as parents to let their children be exposed to it.
I am not a parent. I cannot pretend to know how to raise a child, but I am someone's child and I know that how I was raised directly impacted the formation of my personality today. If you live your life in what you consider a good way, then your child is probably going to turn out like you want them to. Imposing your views on other people and telling them how to live their lives, however, are not good things to teach children.
Letting other people live their lives how they will without interference is the only way to keep peace in our country. It is like my mother used to tell me when I tattled on one of my brothers; they are perfectly capable of getting into trouble all by themselves, you do not need to drag yourself down with them.
