And Google Shrugged – The Insane Fundamentalist Dream of Boycotting Google

Last updated on February 7th, 2013 at 07:07 pm

Have you ever Googled Google? At first glance you’d say that the hate group known as the American Family Association, which is entertaining a boycott of Google, might want to try. Google is a modern-day powerhouse. Google is to the library and Yellow Pages what the space shuttle is to the canoe and then some.

There are analytics, videos, maps, translation, Google Earth, Google News, Google Docs, Google Cloud, Google Books, Google Mail (Gmail), Google Chat, and a browser, Google Chrome – all besides their well known search engine. Every time you watch a video online you use YouTube – Google bought them in 2007.

And that doesn’t include what some see as the only real potential challenger to the iPad: a Google product known as the Nexus 7 tablet. Google is as ubiquitous today as Microsoft was in its heyday.

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On the other hand, I have to go out of my way to look for the American Family Association. There is only one Google. But if you say AFA I have to ask, “Which AFA?” I can think of several other AFA’s – the Air Force Association, the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, and the Ásatrú Folk Assembly – even the American Farriers Association! We’re literally awash in AFA’s.

And while they’re not the only Google haters out there, bigoted but puny AFA is talking a boycott of Google. The boycott of a company whose unofficial slogan is “Don’t be Evil” by an outfit that personifies evil. What has AFA”s undies in a bunch is none of Google’s products but a new campaign, Legalize Love. Google asserts that LGBT rights are human rights. They want “to decriminalize homosexuality and eliminate homophobia around the world”:

At Google, we encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. In our more than 70 offices around the world, we’re committed to cultivating a work environment where Googlers can be themselves and thrive. Legalise Love is our drive to ensure that all of our employees have the same inclusive experience outside of the office as they do at work.

Remember when I said that the AFA might want to Google Google? Apparently they did, but they’re thinking about this boycott anyway (because it’s already worked so well with Home Depot…yeah, not so much).

Watch Buster Wilson, the general manager of the AFA’s radio network, AFA Today on Right Wing Watch:

“Legalize Love will eventually spread to every country where this search engine giant has offices and certainly that will involve the United States. I said that I did not want to support any efforts like this and in fact we are part of boycotting efforts similar to this with other businesses. This is going to be hard for a lot of us. A lot of us are so integrated into Google and Google products. This is going to be a tough one. It’s more than just a search engine. Many of us have Android phones and the Android system is a Google product. Many of us use Google calendar and Google Task and Gmail and all kinds of things. YouTube and all the other things; it’s not just the search engine. So this one is gonna be tough. This one is gonna be one of those situations where I guess we’ll test the meat of our convictions. Google out there pushing for same-sex equality.”

Danny Sullivan at Marketing Land has a question for Buster too, one Buster doesn’t mention but needs to think carefully about: “If The AFA Boycotts Google Over Gay Rights, Will It Remove Itself From Google?”

And Google has all this success while having fun, something the prigs at the American Family Association must just hate. Yes, you can actually run a company without hating on people who are different from you.

According to Wikipedia, “On Fortune magazine’s list of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012 and fourth in 2009 and 2010.” They make a butt-load of money while having fun:  US$ 37.905 billion in 2011. I dunno about the rest of you but the Google prosperity doctrine is looking pretty convincing to me, and it works with a lot less hypocrisy.

I can use my Windows phone to be instantly in contact and synced with my Gmail and my Google contacts even though the default search engine is Bing, a Microsfot product (but more on that below). Google is with me everywhere and usable thanks to 4G. But you don’t have to use a Windows phone to be in constant contact with Google – you can use anything with the now ubiquitous Android operating system, which pretty much encompasses the mobile phone landscape. That’s theirs as well. And by now you may have heard of Google Glasses (Project Glass), a window into the future of a wired humanity beyond the mobile phone. Take a look at that future here.

But remember above when I mentioned Miscrosoft’s Bing search engine? Not so fast, Buster! As Right Wing Watch points out, “If the AFA goes ahead with its Google boycott, the group will also have to boycott Google’s rival Microsoft as the company recently endorsed marriage equality.”

That sound you hear is a whole lotta patriarchal penises deflating. In other words, might as well beam yourself back to the 1930s, to the era before a gay man, Alan Turing, invented the modern computer and made the AFA’s web-based bigotry possible. After all, where would they be without Bryan Fischer’s always entertaining hate blog?

This has gotta be hell on Google Earth for self-righteous aberrochristian bigots, to know they owe so much to a gay man, and are now so dependent on technology invented by a gay man and systems run by or manufactured by companies that support the rights of gays and lesbians to be treated like human beings.

I mentioned yesterday the drive to vote for Jesus conceived of by another fundamentalist bigot. If hatred of LGBT rights takes them off the Internet as well, I’d say we’ve had a good year. Who says now Fundamentalists can’t be useful tools?



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