In possibly the most serious case of treason in the culture wars, Betty Crocker, that icon of the American family, has become, well, demonspawn. She has, as President Obama would have put it, "evolved."
It started one month ago, when the family-values icon offered free wedding cakes to Minnesota's gay couples:
The Advocate:
When Minnesota's marriage equality law went into effect August 1, the Minneapolis-based baking goods supplier Betty Crocker offered free wedding cakes to some of the happy, newly married gay and lesbian couples. A company spokesman said at the time that "Betty celebrates all families. " We don't want to be old-fashioned."
That was enough for noted homophobe Tony Perkins, president of the certified antigay hate group Family Research Council, to give up Betty's delicious confections for good. And now Perkins wants all his fellow conservatives to do the same.
Update: but if that wasn't enough, a Betty Crocker-sponsored video celebrating ALL families surfaced last Friday, and anyone who ever thought BC was the last bastion of matronly America is pissed.
To make matters even worse, the "evolution" takes place after it was discovered
that the stalwart National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was influencing (aka
"advising") Russian leaders in Russia's new anti-gay laws.
National
Organization For Marriage president Brian Brown was heavily involved in France's
anti-gay protests that preceded the successful vote for same-sex marriage.
Brown even bragged about it in NOM fundraising emails and on their website. And
only after the French marriage bill passed did Brown finally denounce the
frequent violence of the protesters he had touted. But while Brown was
promoting his mission of hate in Paris, he was hiding another deep, dark
voyage: his trip to Russia.
Just days before the Russian parliament passed a bill all but banning Russia's
600,000 parentless children from being adopted by foreign same-sex couples,
Brian Brown advised the Russian Duma (Congress) not only to pass the bill, but
to not divorce marriage from the issue of adoption.
And now the Duma is considering legislation removing all children (adopted and
biological) from same-sex families.
The Russia-Cookie Baker Connection
Bryan Fischer, the AFA's hater monger extraordinaire, has declared Russia's
Vladimir Putin to be the new "Lion
of Christianity." primarily because of Russia's stance against gays,
especially gay adoption. And as the same-sex marriage debate winds down in the
US, the question of same-sex parenting looms larger as the remaining battle
against everything/anything gay. The focus has changed. The exported strategies
of hate have changed.
But the hate remains the same.
Last weekend's Values Voters Summit reconfirmed the "social
conservative" stance of "traditional values" even becoming
misogynistic in voice:
RHReality
Check.org:
But [Ben] Carson unleashed his harshest words on women who have abortions.
"There's no war on women," Carson said. "There's a war on their baby." He
explained it this way: "You know, there are those of us in this society who've
told women that there's a war on them because that cute little baby inside of
them, they may want to get rid of it." His evidence that there's no war on
women? The fact that people will give up a seat on the bus for a pregnant
woman.
The fact that there is still a war on women in terms of unequal pay may be
obscured by anti-abortion activists, but it still exists in the hearts of the
conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist and staunch defender of
women back-in-the-home. Today's job market is terrifying to them: in more than
40% of homes with children, working mothers are the breadwinners. The
stay-at-home mom so easily represented by Betty Crocker, has become a thing of
the past.
Marriage. Family. Betty Crocker. They're changing. The Christian Right doesn't
like it.
Better to move on to Russia.