Monday, August 22, 2011

Buying the Corporations That Sell Us Morality

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/12/11/8395465/index.htm

How bad is this? Personally, I've always thought that organizations, other than religious groups that require people to live up to all of their moral/ethical teachings, shouldn't try to find out what individuals do on their own time. I am, however, part of a generation whose consensus of opinion, when I was growing up, was that homosexuality was something like coprophagia--something normal people didn't even want to think about.

So the recent barrage of "pro-gay statements" coming from Big Business bothers me. Even when the statements are, in and of themselves, ideas I support. I am pro-privacy, in favor of people's right to do anything that doesn't harm others on their own time; I felt that way thirty years ago. I know these people didn't feel this way thirty years ago.

I don't think most of them are simply overcompensating, either. I think they've let themselves be bribed or bullied into supporting things they would have opposed, in the past. I'm not hearing expressions of a reasoning process, a maturing into empathy or at least away from panic. What I'm reading in this particular article looks a lot like "Yes, yes, anything you say, just put down that blood."

And I'm very, very concerned. Not because I think anybody should waste time and energy hating a large group of people most of whom they don't even know. I'm concerned because people who sell out so easily on one point will sell out on other points too. If Wal-Mart goes "pro-gay" today, will Wal-Mart go pro-euthanasia tomorrow? And will every ethical flipflop then be marketed to the daytime TV audience, via endless commercial messages and "after-school specials," as the latest substitute for daytime-TV-level ethical concepts like sharing your toys and wiping your nose?

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