A boycott against Starbucks over its
support for gay marriage is being exported overseas.
The National Organization for Marriage
(NOM), the nation's most vociferous opponent of gay rights, last
month launched its Dump
Starbucks campaign on the same day the New Hampshire House
rejected a bill widely promoted by NOM which would have repealed the
state's 2-year-old gay marriage law.
While the group has collected over
30,800 digital signatures from people pledging to avoid Starbucks
shops and its retail products, the figure pales in comparison to a
644,000-strong SumOfUs.org
counter protest thanking the coffee giant for its support.
NOM said it would begin running its
online ad campaign urging coffee drinkers not to patronize Starbucks
in the Middle East, Indonesia and China.
“Obviously these are countries that
Starbucks is in, but they're also countries that have very
traditional views on marriage,” Thomas Peters, who blogs for NOM,
told National Public Radio (NPR).
“So we think that people in these countries should be aware that
Starbucks isn't just coffee, it's coffee with an agenda.”
(Related: Starbucks
thanked for gay marriage support with giant card.)