A&F Boycotter Reluctant to Believe Retailer's Rationale for Yanking Sleazy 'Magalog'
by Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown
December 4, 2003
(AgapePress) - A pro-family advocate who has led the fight against a clothing company's pornographic catalog says he is taking a "wait-and-see" attitude about their decision to pull the publication from their stores.The decision by Abercrombie & Fitch to discontinue selling the Christmas edition of it pornographic catalog was viewed as a great news by many pro-family groups and concerned Christians. Bill Johnson is one of those. But the president of the American Decency Association is still leery about the future because of the company's history of using sex to sell its merchandise.
"Abercrombie & Fitch sadly has such a horrible reputation," Johnson says. "They have always been so willing to be in-your-face and they're going to do their own thing -- and that has been the consistent pattern that we have seen."
Johnson advises those who have been boycotting A&F to bide their time. "We rejoice for this present time [and] we're hopeful that it will not be the case in the future -- [but] until we see otherwise that the future catalogs no longer contain this kind of smut ... we will just have to have a wait-and-see attitude about this," he says.
The ADA leader discounts comments from an A&F spokesman, who stated the catalogs were removed from stores to make display room for a new line of perfume -- and not because of a deluge of phone calls from individuals threatening to boycott the retailer because of the catalog.
"Don't believe the spin you hear from A&F," Johnson says on the ADA website. "They didn't invest thousands upon thousands of dollars for the Christmas quarterly to destroy them before the Christmas season ended," he says.
Instead, Johnson believes the pressure against the clothier is mounting. "We believe that in all likelihood A&F did receive a massive amount of calls. We know that Dr. Dobson often generates that many calls," he says in reference to calls for a boycott from the founder of Focus on the Family.
Johnson says it is just as important as ever for Christian parents to stop spending their money at Abercrombie & Fitch and allowing their children to shop there.
