Starbucks CEO: If You Support Traditional Marriage, We Don’t Want Your Business
Excerpted from EXAMINER:
At the Starbucks annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday, CEO Howard Schultz sent a clear message to anyone who supports traditional marriage over gay marriage: we don’t want your business. After saying Starbucks wants to “embrace diversity of all kinds,” he told a shareholder who supports traditional marriage that he should sell his shares and invest in some other company.
According to a report by Forbes, Schultz seemed a bit intolerant of any Starbucks shareholders who opposed gay marriage for moral or religious reasons. During the meeting, shareholder Tom Strobhar (who founded the Corporate Morality Action Center) pointed out that after the company voiced its support for a referendum backing gay marriage in Washington state, a boycott by traditional marriage supporters caused a drop in sales revenue. Schultz told him “You can sell your shares in Starbucks and buy shares in another company” if he did not agree with the company’s pro-gay marriage stand.
Despite strong opposition from the religious and political right, support for gay marriage in America has risen in recent years. The rise of support for gay marriage has also seen a rise of intolerance for those who oppose it. Many who joined the boycott of Starbucks last year were dismissed as bigots, even though the boycott did cause revenue to drop. A website, DumpStarbucks.com, has earned tens of thousands of supporters who refuse to buy from the coffee chain in response. source: beforeitsnews
We are urging customers across the globe to ‘Dump Starbucks’ because it has taken a corporate-wide position that the definition of marriage between one man and one woman should be eliminated and that same-sex marriage should become equally ‘normal’. As such, Starbucks has deeply offended at least half its US customers, and the vast majority of its international customers. On January 24th, 2012, Starbucks issued a memorandum declaring that same-sex marriage ‘is core to who we are and what we value as a company. Starbucks also used its resources to participate in a legal case seeking to overturn a federal law declaring marriage as the union of one man and one woman. In many areas of the world where Starbucks does business, the concept of ‘gay marriage’ is unheard of and deeply offensive to cultural, moral and religious values. In taking these actions, Starbucks has declared a culture war on all people of faith (and millions of others) who believe that the institution of marriage as one man and one woman is worth preserving. A portion of every cup of coffee purchased at a Starbucks anywhere in the world goes to fund this corporate assault on marriage. We urge consumers across the globe to join the ‘Dump Starbucks’ campaign. In addition to Starbucks coffee shops, the Starbucks Corporation also owns Seattle’s Best Coffee, Verismo single-serve coffee system, Evolution Fresh, Tazo Tea, Torrefazione Italia Coffee, and La Boulange. Sign the petition here to register your protest.
