Ellen DeGeneres on Wednesday responded
to calls to have her fired as the spokesperson for JCPenney because
she is gay.
The group One Million Moms, which is
closely associated with the Christian conservative group American
Family Association (AFA), said it objected to DeGeneres because the
comedian is openly gay.
“By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon,
JCPenney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process
will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful
to them over all these years,” the group said.
“Funny that JCPenney thinks hiring an
open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of
its customers are traditional families.”
The 54-year-old DeGeneres, who publicly
came out in 1997, is a spokesperson for CoverGirl and American
Express.
DeGeneres began her The Ellen
DeGeneres Show opening monologue by cheering a federal court's
ruling declaring unconstitutional California's gay marriage ban,
Proposition 8.
“There was some good news for
marriage equality in California yesterday,” DeGeneres said. “For
a long time, same-sex marriage was not legal. Then, here in
California, it was legal for like 25 minutes. Then it was not legal
again because of something called Prop 8, which banned same-sex
marriage. And I'm happy to say that yesterday an appeals court ruled
that Prop was unconstitutional.”
DeGeneres married actress Portia De
Rossi in 2008 during those “25 minutes” when such unions were
legal.
“This leads me into something else I
would like to talk about,” she said as she veered into talking
about the protest and JCPenney's continued support.
“And normally, I try not to pay
attention to my haters – but this time I'd like to talk about it,
because my haters are my motivators.”
“First of all, being gay or pro-gay
isn't a bandwagon. 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.”
“I usually don't talk about stuff
like this on my show, but I really want to thank everyone who is
supporting me. Here are the values I stand for. I stand for
honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way
you'd want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are
traditional values. That's what I stand for … I also believe in
dance.”
DeGeneres also took a swipe at the
group's “rounding up to the nearest million” its 40,000
membership. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.
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