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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.

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Not only the local Wal-Mart managers but the head of the corporation. I am sure this is not what Sam intended for this business either.

'Brokeback Mountain' banned in anti-gay move

By John Marquis Thu Apr 6, 8:07 AM ET

NASSAU, Bahamas (Reuters) - The Bahamas has banned the gay cowboy movie "Brokeback Mountain," triggering a new controversy over the island chain's reputation for homophobia.

Gay rights groups and other critics called on the Plays and Films Control Board to think again, so far to no avail.

"I cannot understand denying people the right to make their own choices," said theater director Phillip Burrows.

The award-winning 2005 film about two cowboys who fall in love got the thumbs-down from the control board after a request for it to be banned from the Bahamas Christian Council, which has been involved in previous anti-gay action.

The ban does not come as a surprise to Bahamians.

Last September, Miss Teen Bahamas was stripped of her title after she admitted to being a lesbian.

Four years ago, employees walked off the job at an isolated resort cay in the Bahamas after a shipload of gays arrived. The disgusted workers described carnal scenes on the beach as "like Sodom and Gomorrah" and refused to work until they had gone.

In 2004, Christian groups led a protest against the Norwegian Dawn cruise ship, which had docked with 1,600 gay passengers.

Rallied by the Save the Bahamas Initiative, which maintains that family values are undermined by gay couples, hundreds of demonstrators waved banners saying, "If you're gay, stay away," and "Even animals have more sense than homosexuals."

The 2004 protest did not repeat the violence of 1998, when lesbian couples were chased off Bay Street, Nassau's main shopping thoroughfare, by furious protesters and the mooring ropes of a visiting gay cruise ship were tossed into the sea.

In its 2005 Country Report, the State Department criticized the Bahamas government for actively promoting opposition to homosexuality.

"Although homosexual relations between consenting adults are legal, there was no legislation to address the human rights concerns of homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals or trans-gendered persons," said the report, released last month.

A gay rights organization, the Rainbow Alliance, has called for tolerance and last year opened an office in Nassau.

"We hope this will become a center for social change," said member Helen Klonaris.

'Brokeback Mountain' banned in anti-gay move (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060406/od_nm/bahamas_brokeback_dc;_ylt=An8uGeywP3iida4faB9zgnes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3NW1oMDRpBHNlYwM3NTc-)