Hallmark Channel Steps In It, Then Chases The Money

You might have heard the kerfuffle earlier this month about the icky sweet Hallmark Channel getting into a not-so-sweet mess over its short-lived ban over an LGBTQ-friendly advertisement, and the howls of controversy that followed.  

The controversy has since settled down. Still, it was a textbook case about how corporations ought to be in tune with public opinion, and basic fairness when they make some decisions.

The Hallmark Channel is in its prime season right now, with movies with the same, frankly tired theme.

A woman or a man is cynical about Christmas. The couple meet, don't get along at first, fall in love, and everything becomes so romantic and sentimental with the intention of driving the audience into happy holiday cheers.

That's not my style, but then again, a lot of people love it. More power to them! I endorse anything that brings people joy.

But here's the joyless part.

An outfit called One Million Moms, basically a wholly owned subidiary of the American Family Association, was hugely upset when they saw an ad on the Hallmark Channel of a same-gender couple, two women, in a wedding ad by Zola.

"One Million Moms is asking once again or Hallmark to stay true to its family friendly roots that so many families have grown to love, and to keep sex and sexual conduct - incluing the promotion of homosexualithy - out of its programming."

Though, apparently, One Million Moms seemed perfectly fine with straight couples kissing, but whatever.

Even worse, One Million Moms cited the Bible, Romans1:18-32, which suggests we should just kill all the gays:

"Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die."

OK, we should note that One Million Moms probably does not consist of one million real moms. Whatever this organization is, they basically boycott everything that doesn't adhere to Christian fundamentalists' White Jesus perspective.

One wag on Twitter suggested that One Millon Moms is just 20 Karens.

At least according to GLAAD, an LGBTQ support organization,  One Million Moms is basically just one annoying woman. Jeremy Hooper writes:

"It is basically One Meddling Mom with an agenda, and no company should be giving her the credence she so desperately craves.

Her name is Monica Cole. I the decade that I have been aware of One Millio Moms, she is quite literally the only staff member I have ever heard anyone name. She is the one and only person who appears on their petitions, as well as the one and only person who speaks for them to the media. She is the mom. Her. Solo. One Person, supposedly representing one."

Hallmark officials, thinking that "one million moms" were pissed off about the lesbian wedding ad, pulled the plug on it.

Of course the problem with that was, more than a million people for sure, including me, were pissed off at Hallmark for being bigoted, or least appearing to be.   News of this broke on a December midmonth Saturday.

By that Sunday night, facing a furious backlash, Hallmark just as furiously backpeddled. As Buzzfeed News and many other media outlets reported, Mike Perry, president and CEO of Hallmark Cards said the company was "truly sorry" for the brief ad shutdown.

"The Crown Media team has been agonizing over this decision as we've seen the hurt it has unintentionally caused. Said simply, they believe this was the wrong decision. We are truly sorry for the hurt and disappointment this has caused."

Hallmark also said it would work with GLAAD to better represent ethe LGBTQ community.

The abrupt reversal, I'm sorry to say, was probably not some newfound sense of fairness, but one of money. Hallmark quickly realized that the people who objected to Zola lesbian wedding ads airing on the network was far smaller than the number of people pissed off by the decision.

Which has better revenue potential? A few religious zealots or a huge bunch of basically fair minded consumers?

I'm not saying this is really wrong. It is the free market. People can choose to patronize or not patronize any business for any reason (unless it goes to the extreme of violating hate laws).

Corporations must always sort of thread the needle to figure out how not to annoy its customers, because they want to keep them.  Hallmark did not thread the needle, and a public relations fiasco resulted.

In the end, Hallmark managed to mostly recover.  Zola said they would resume advertising with Hallmark, other advertisers stuck with them, and the outrage over the Hallmark Channel's initial has waned.

All the more reason to research outfits that are attacking you to see if there is any bite behind the bark.  In the case of One Million Moms, the bark had nothing behind it. Oh well. Let other conpanies beware!

Wyoming State Senator Has Novel Argument In Favor Of Death Penalty

Wyoming State Senator Lynn Hutchings has some interesting views
on the death penalty, Jesus and sexual orientation.

The Wyoming legislature just debated whether to abolish the death penalty in that state. In the end, they decided to keep it. No surprise there, really. It's a pretty conservative state.

There are fairly reasonable, or at least understandable arguments on both sides of the death penalty debate, but one argument for the death penalty by a Wyoming State Senator was, um, novel.

As Patheos explains:

"Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne argued that without the death penalty, Jesus Christ would not have been able to die to absolve the sins of mankind, and therefore capital punishment should be maintained.

'The greatest man who ever lived died via the death penalty for you and me,' she said. 'I'm grateful to him for our future hope because of this. Governments were instituted to execute justice. If it wasn't for Jesus dying via the death penalty, we would all have no hope.'"

I don't know where to begin to unpack this. I guess she's saying that since Jesus was given the death penalty, it's OK to impose the death penalty. Never mind that Jesus was innocent of any crime. So is it OK to impose the death penalty on innocent people, because that's what happened to Jesus?

For such a "Christian" she's not really up on how this works. Jesus is said to have risen from the dead, and that moment was atoning for the world's sins. In other words, Jesus could have died for any reason, so long as he rose from the dead.

The Romans wanted Jesus dead. Are we really going to design state law enforcement as Pontius Pilate would have?

And just how is death "hopeful"?

Hutchings has been on a roll this month anyway.  She met with a Gay-Straight Alliance group at Central High School in Cheyenne to discuss a state bill that would ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, notes the Huffington Post, among many other media outlets.

Hutchings, who doesn't like the legislation, was reported to have said, "If my sexual orientation was to have sex with all of the men in there and I had sex with all of the women in there and then they brought their children and I had sex with all of them, and then brought their dogs in and I had sex with them, should I be protected for my sexual orientation?"

Um, being a nutjob is not a sexual orientation, but nice try, Lynn!

That she said this weirdness to a group of 14 and 15 year olds makes this all the more yuckier, too.

Hutchings later tried to explain these were just rhetorical questions and that sexual orientation "can be defined in so many ways."

Uh-huh.

Anyone want to try explaining to Hutchings that pedophilia and bestiality aren't sexual orientations? Anyone?

Nah, Hutchings is a lost cause. But an entertaining one, in a sick sort of way.