Tony Perkins, president of the
Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC), has claimed
that Starbucks' support for gay marriage has led to billions in
losses.
In a radio bulletin, Perkins gave the
National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) “Dump Starbucks”
boycott campaign credit for the coffee giant's recent financial woes.
“It didn't take long for Starbucks to
lose bucks over marriage,” Perkins says in the bulletin. “In
January, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said endorsing same-sex
marriage would be good for business. Boy was he wrong! Siding with
radical homosexuals has its price in this country. And in Starbucks'
case, the cost is about ten billion dollars. That's how much the
coffee giant lost in stock value since the campaign to 'Dump
Starbucks' got underway. In the last eight months, the company's
missed sales projections and watched stocks dive from $61 to $48, for
a loss of more than $10.2 billion. How many companies will fall for
the lie that endorsing same-sex marriage will help business? J.C.
Penney's tried it. Target's tried it. Now Starbucks. And every
time, there's a reason to believe that alienating millions of
customers will directly affect a company's bottom line.”
He
added: “On the flip side, look at Chick-fil-A. They found out
that supporting traditional values pays just as many cultural
dividends as financial ones.”
What Perkins neglected to mention is
that that $60.67 record high was reached on April 13, nearly 4 months
after the company endorsed gay nuptials and 6 months after it came
out against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). And while the
company's stock price did plummet in August, it has since recovered
to $50.84 as of Thursday, which is $13.09 higher than last year. In
fact, Starbucks stock has a positive trendline going back as far as
2009.