Former GOP presidential candidate Fred
Karger on Friday announced a boycott against the Orlando Magic and
Amway over a donation given by the president of the companies in
support of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's
most vociferous opponent of gay marriage.
At a press conference in Las Vegas to
announce the boycott, Karger said that Doug DeVos gave $500,000 to
the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund through his
Douglas & Maria DeVos Foundation.
It is the “largest family donation to
NOM in its history,” Karger said.
“With four crucial gay marriage
elections coming up on November 6 we feel that an Amway boycott will
send a message to Amway owners and other potential mega-donors that
if you plan to give lots of money to anti-LGBT organizations like NOM
or directly to the November anti-gay marriage campaigns we may well
take action against you,” Karger said in a statement.
In an interview with the Grand
Rapids Press, Rich DeVos, Doug DeVos' father, said that he
opposes gay marriage because marriage is not vital to gay and lesbian
couples and suggested that gay men were responsible for the AIDS
pandemic.
“Don't keep asking for a concession
on a marriage issue which is not vital to them in life,” DeVos
said. “They made it a vital issue because they want to. Call it
something else, call it whatever you want to, but marriage is a
sacred document, OK? A sacred sacrament.”
After buttoning up his campaign for the
GOP nomination for president in June, Karger returned to gay
activism, renaming advocacy group Californians Against Hate to Rights
Equal Rights. The Amway/Orlando Magic boycott is the group's
first since relaunching. Karger promised he was just getting
started.