Starbucks has said a boycott over its
support for gay marriage has had no impact on its business.
“We're not seeing any impact,”
Starbucks spokesman Zack Hutson told Seattle alternative The
Stranger.
The National Organization for Marriage
(NOM), the nation's most vociferous opponent of gay marriage,
launched its “Dump Starbucks” boycott after Starbucks CEO Howard
Schultz defended
the company's decision to back Washington state's recently-approved
gay marriage law.
An online petition by the group
SumOfUs.org
thanking Starbucks for its support has outpaced boycott pledges.
As of Thursday morning, supporters were
outpacing opponents 12 to 1, with more than 295,000 people signing a
thank you card and just under 23,700 pledging to avoid Starbucks
shops and its retail products.
Josh Friedes a spokesman for Equal
Rights Washington, which is working against an effort to repeal the
law in November, said NOM's boycott was helping bring together
supporters.
“There has been an incredible
Facebook campaign of photos of people drinking coffee at Starbucks.
In some ways, NOM did our work for us. They are highlighting the
fact that major corporations based in Washington state are supporting
marriage equality and that an out-of-state, anti-gay organization is
spearheading the movement to derail it.”
“NOM for years has been so feared for
having been strategic,” he added. “Now for the first time, they
appear to be flailing because the proposed boycott of Starbucks was
incredibly poorly conceived.”
(Related: Did
gay marriage foe NOM call Carrie Prejean, David Tyree dumb?)