In the fight between Ellen DeGeneres and homophobic moms, the score is 2-0, advantage: Ellen.
Last week, One Million Moms, an online project sponsored by the socially-conservative American Family Association, called on JC Penney to fire its openly-gay spokesperson, Ellen DeGeneres. The retailer stood by its decision, and now DeGeneres herself is entering the fray, stating that “the haters are my motivators.”
As of right now, the “One Million Moms” Facebook page has vanished, though its website is still up, attacking JC Penney for “jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon.”
“First of all, being gay or pro-gay is not a bandwagon,” DeGeneres said on her show today. “You don’t get a free ride anywhere, there’s no music, and occasionally we’ll sing ‘We are Family,’ but that’s about it.”
Perhaps the Moms removed their Facebook page because posts in support of DeGeneres began to appear on the page, diluting the their message.
One post, which DeGeneres highlighted on her show, read, “Love Ellen and everything she stands for. I’m going to shop there more now!”
While One Million Moms probably doesn’t have a million members (its Facebook group only had about 40,000 Facebook members; Ellen said “they’re rounding to the nearest million”) and though this particular battle certainly seems to be over, there are plenty of other things for the group to flex their morally-superior muscles over.
Past campaigns have attacked TV shows like “Modern Family” and “Glee” for portraying gay people as human beings and for being “confusing to adults.” And with the multi-million-dollar American Family Association at its back, this probably isn’t the last we’ve heard from the Moms.