Starbucks Blows Off its Pro-Family Customers

The Christian Diarist ^ | March 26, 2012 | JP

[CHRISTIAN DIARIST]

Starbucks held its annual shareholders meeting last week, during which the Seattle-based coffee company affirmed that support for same-sex marriage is one of its core values.

Following the meeting, the National Organization of Marriage announced a “Dump Starbucks” protest campaign.

“The majority of Americans,” said NOM President Brian Brown, “believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. They will not be pleased to learn that their money is being used to advance gay marriage in society.”

Brown’s remarks, and NOM’s protest campaign, fomented predictable yelps of outrage from the LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Aesexual) community, which considers opposition to same-sex marriage prima facie evidence of bigotry.

But it also elicited unexpected criticism from certain leaders within the evangelical community, who think that Christians ought not join NOM’s protest campaign.

“It’s not that I’m saying a boycott in and of itself is always evil or wrong,” blogged Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

“It’s just that, in this case (and many like it),” he continued, a boycott exposes us to our worst tendencies. Christians are tempted, again and again, to fight live the devil to please the Lord.”

Well, I respectfully disagree with Dr. Moore. I believe that NOM, whose stated mission is “to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it,” is standing in the gap for those of who are not homophobic, but who believe that God intended marriage to be exclusively between man and woman.

I had no idea Starbucks had waded into the same-sex marriage debate. As a customer, I do not expect the coffee company to embrace my point of view on the issue. I do, however, expect the company to be neutral.

As Brown suggested, I am deeply offended that Starbucks is using the money I have spent on its lattes to support public policy that offends my religious sensibilities. Just as I am deeply offended that the Girl Scouts are in bed with Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion providers, while they are asking me to buy their cookies.

Well, I am no longer buying Girl Scout cookies, though the girls actually selling the cookies know nothing about the organization’s tacit support for abortion. And I will no longer buy my lattes at Starbucks, though the baristas working there have nothing to with the company’s misguided core values.

Companies like Starbucks, organizations like the Girl Scouts, don’t care if they offend the faith community. That’s why neither will get another dollar from me.

[OriginalChristian]

I thought I was alone with this observation. One cup of ‘regular’ coffee in an airport somewhere years ago was enough for me to never patronize them again for this reason.

[Jeff Chandler]

There is an interesting story behind the burnt tasting coffee fad. It seems that the most of the Italians who immigrated to the U.S. were poor people looking for opportunity. Since they could not afford high quality coffee beans, they compensated by roasting the inferior beans longer, giving their espresso that “burnt” flavor that has become so popular. Espresso became “cool” to drink, and the burnt taste became associated with sophisticated taste in coffee products, the sophisticated folk being ignorant to its origins.

For me, Folgers brewed in a drip coffee maker is my favorite, although on rare occasions we put it through a French press for a real kick in the butt.

[dsc]

I have been boycotting them for years because they give money to baby-killers.