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Posted on 11/01/2006 4:19:04 AM PST by Man50D
Sam Walton's original stores wouldn't even sell recorded music if it contained profanity and Janet Baird was happy working hard to make the company money, setting up and managing wedding fairs and other promotions, and won awards for her efforts.
She and her husband even married at one of the store's events.
But no more. The Ohio woman, after hearing the shocking confirmation directly from the mega-corporation's international headquarters that the company is, in fact, contributing to the financial and moral agenda of the nation's "gay" chamber of commerce, she quit. And she's not a bit worried.
"I got God backing me. That's where I stand on it," she told WND in an interview.
Baird had worked for the corporation, in various branches including Sam's Club and Wal-Mart, since 1992. It was a recent tip she received from her brother that was the beginning of the end, because he told her "my company had joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce."
It was during an interview with WND in August that Wal-Mart spokesman Bob McAdam said, "It is correct that we have a dialogue with the (gay chamber). This is just what businesses do."
"Sam Walton was such a moral man, he wouldn't even allow music to be sold in his stores if it had bad language," Baird said. "When it comes to moral values, first of all they started selling smutty magazines, then they brought in nasty music and videos, even ones others refused to sell, like 'Brokeback Mountain.'"
Now this comes along. "I sent an e-mail (to the company) asking, 'What have you done to Sam Walton's store?" Baird said.
McAdam had told WND the move was just another business outreach, much as the company's affiliations with other chambers of commerce, such as the Hispanic organization.
But to Baird, it wasn't the same. She called the corporate office for its response. "The lady said, 'Yes.' When I asked if the money I spent shopping at Wal-Mart would go to support same-sex marriage, she simply responded, 'Sales are sales.'"
"I let her know how long I had worked at Wal-Mart and told her that I would no longer work for this company and never spend another dime there. She replied, 'I hope you don't mean that.' I did mean it. The next day I went to the store and quit. The manager that signed my exit papers had no idea about what had been going on in the leadership of Wal-Mart."
Now she's staging protests in front of that store, and others nearby, to let people know of the company's affiliations and commitments.
She said a large part of her years-long commitment to the company was because of the original core values the company exemplified.
"I began working with Sam's Club in 1992. Mr. Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart Stores, had recently passed away. The more I learned about this man the more I wanted to do what I could to make this an ever better place to work.
"I worked in marketing and put together the first wedding expo. This was a fund-raiser that allowed vendors to set up for a weekend and all the proceeds went to the Children's Miracle Network. It was a huge success," she said.
"This became a yearly event. I was so proud to work for this company. I was privileged to be the event coordinator for a number of Wal-Mart sponsored events and raised a lot of money in the community," she said.
One beneficiary was a young man named Luke Clemons. He was 18 and needed a liver transplant. "We managed to raise enough money for (the) transplant and start a Luke Clemons Foundation," Baird said. He survived four more years.
For that work, she was given a Member Service Award.
"This was not a job to me, it was a ministry given to me by God Himself to help His people in need and get paid for it at the same time," Baird said.
But things changed. "Today Wal-Mart is not the same company Mr. Sam started. I think he would rather see it go under than to see what it has become. Mr. Sam loved God – the store he began does not!" she said.
Her boycott is getting its start in front of the store where she used to work, on the Lexington Springmill Road in Ontario, and then at the nearby store in Mansfield, Ohio, and then will continue to other stores.
"As Christians we have to take a stand and get the word out because most people are not aware of what is happening," she said.
Her big boycott launch will be the Friday after Thanksgiving, November 24, she said, because that traditionally is the biggest single shopping day of the year.
"We will be joining all of you on the day after Thanksgiving … to bring the Gospel of Christ to the very gates of hell," she said.
She's replaced only part of the income she gave up by leaving Wal-Mart, by accepting a position in a physician's office.
When Wal-Mart initially confirmed the agreement to support the "gay" chamber, Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., immediately launched a citizens protest of the move.
It also was at that point that an advertising industry site, AdAge, confirmed Wal-Mart not only had joined the NGLCC but also has hired a "gay-marketing" shop and started discussions about extending domestic-partner benefits to employees.
In the AdAge report, Justin Nelson of the NGLCC described the company as "pragmatic."
"They have been viewed with some degree of skepticism by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community, and it's important for them in terms of gaining market share to change that," he told AdAge.
Perkins told supporters that the "heat" from the "radical left" apparently influenced the company's corporate decisions, and he wants constituents to let Wal-Mart know of their displeasure.
"While the NGLCC professes to promote the 'interests of the LGBT business community,' this is not all they have done," Perkins said. "Recently, they described efforts to defend traditional marriage as an attempt to 'write discrimination into the Constitution …' The NGLCC also advocated attaching a pro-homosexual 'hate crimes' amendment to legislation intended to protect children from violent sex offenders."
"It is unfortunate," Perkins said, "that Wal-Mart has joined forces with an organization whose mission opposes many of the values shared by rural and small-town America. It is precisely the interests of average Americans that Wal-Mart has prided itself in promoting.
"Now, by surrendering to the radical homosexual lobby, Wal-Mart has entered the political arena with no economic benefit to their company or their customers," he said.
Sam is probably spinning in his grave.
Now this is a woman with principals! We should be more like her and this agenda would be defeated. God bless her.
One of the companies top executives led the dialogue with NLGC, I understand.
I don't have his name handy but it is probably worth mentioning at some time in the future.
I think a lot of people are experiencing a deep disappointment with the company that Sam Walton built on higher standards than people like Lee Scott have.
I personally used to love shopping at WalMart, but when they put up all their signs in English AND Spanish, I rarely go there now. Our community has Japanese, Vietnamese, Russian, Chinese and several others beside Mexicans.
I hope Sam is turning in his grave! I've been a very ardent supporter of Wal-Mart for 30 years! I will not buy from there again, unless they drop this agenda now.
Double standard. Nah, not with the lamestream mess??!
So once more, the assault by the leftists has succeeded in 'taking down' yet another corporation that was formerly based on family values vs. on leftist 'no values'.
How sad.
The answer is clear and obvious. WalMart is trying to get the socialist, anti-Corporation leftists off of it's back. The only way to do that is to donate to their leftist causes and to embrace the ideology of the left.
I bet the DemRats/leftists are celebrating everywhere over this.
I guess God took His ministry back?
"I got God backing me. That's where I stand on it," she told WND in an interview.
Let me know how much he pays.
The people on these threads are pathetic. If you all boycotted every company that gave a few grand to some gay group, you'd be living out in the woods in a log cabin, chasing rabbits with a stick.
Forget all the good Wal-Mart does and has done, all the people they employ, all the money they save Americans, they **GASP** gave a few thousand bucks to a gay group!
The media has FReepers number with this story. It would be kind of funny were it not so sad.
Appeasement never works...A lesson that history teaches over and over, again.
"It is unfortunate," Perkins said, "that Wal-Mart has joined forces with an organization.."
More freakin' spin. I donate to the Unted Way but I have not "joined forces" with them. Ridiculous.
Why don't people stop paying their taxes since a hell of a lot more money from taxes goes to gays than does Wal-Mart money. Come on, Janet Naird, put your holier-than-thou money where your holier-than-thou mouth is. The government gives milllions to these groups. What do you intend to do about that? You could always move to A Middle Eastern country.....please?
But the other reason these companies cater to the gay lobby is that if you want to recruit technical and creative talent for your company, you'd best not be allergic to gay people. And the ones who are straight that you've already hired might be very sympathetic to gay people, and would bolt if you transmitted the message that gay people are not welcome at your firm or might be poorly treated at your firm. (I'm a math professor, so I know a lot of these kind of people. The academic culture at even small red state schools is now very pro-gay, if you are uncomfortable around gay people you're going to be an unhappy camper. It doesn't bother me. My point being that the technical and creative people come from the university environments, and share the same culture.)
So...Wal-Mart is run by perverts now....
Perhaps they should change their name
to Up-Mart, "For the discerning defect!"
Walmart is shaking in its boots.
Homosexuals are *not* "ordinary people"
nor are they or ever will be "normal".
They are biological, genetic,
sexual, and cultural, defectives.
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