Pro-Family Group Rips Wal-Mart for Promoting Brokeback
by Allie Martin
March 24, 2006
(AgapePress) - - An official with a pro-family advocacy group is encouraging concerned Christians to contact Wal-Mart regarding the upcoming home video and DVD release of the movie Brokeback Mountain. He claims the retailer's plan to distribute the pro-homosexual film is evidence Wal-Mart has strayed from its family-friendly roots.
Wal-Mart stores nationwide will carry the controversial movie when it is released on DVD. In-store posters and billboards are already advertising the upcoming release, scheduled for April 4. The movie, which opened in a limited number of theaters in early December, tells the story of two cowboys who carry on a homosexual relationship while maintaining traditional marriages. By Hollywood standards it was not a huge box office success (less than $90 million in the U.S. as of March 12), drawing much of its viewing audience in cities known to have large homosexual populations.
Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the Mississippi-based American Family Association, says the movie -- despite winning three Academy Awards earlier this month -- is not "family-friendly." And it does not belong on the shelves of a store that has marketed itself to middle America, he adds.
"It's quite obvious to anyone who shops at Wal-Mart that they're no longer the family-friendly company that they used to project in their image," says Sharp. "We've seen a downward spiral trend by the Wal-Mart Corporation in which they are more and more becoming like the world rather than the family-friendly company we grew up with."
The pro-family activist contends the giant retailer is abandoning its core principles and moving "further and further away" from its historical family-friendly image. "It's becoming now more important for Wal-Mart to make money than to serve consumers," Sharp observes.
And that approach to business, he believes, is outside the scope of anything Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton ever dreamed. "His business purpose was to supply a good product at a good price," the AFA spokesman shares. "And now ... it seems [that Wal-Mart is saying] 'We're going to do everything we can to make another dollar, regardless of how our customers feel.'"
Believing that turnabout is fair play, Sharp encourages concerned Christians to let their local Wal-Mart managers know how they feel and that they are not pleased over the chain's decision to promote and carry the pro-homosexual movie.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
