Shoppers can cross one company off their naughty list this Christmas: Macy’s! The department store is proving that it has some wise men of its own with the store’s recent decision to stop supporting Planned Parenthood. The news came as a huge victory — and relief — to pro-lifers who were paying careful attention to the list of the group’s biggest corporate backers.

In October, our friends at 2nd Vote released a list of more than three dozen brand giants who’ve been directly contributing to Cecile Richards’s group — and using consumer dollars to do it. Despite all of the bad publicity — and even worse ethics — Planned Parenthood continues to cash in on the lie that it offers some of America’s best women’s health care. For now, at least, Macy’s isn’t fooled — and announced that a portion of its dollars would no longer be wired to the bank of America’s largest abortion business. “You may remember how four companies (AT&T, Coca-Cola, Ford, and Xerox) publicly distanced themselves from Planned Parenthood last year after our research exposed forty-one companies with direct financial ties to the abortion giant,” 2nd Vote’s Lance Wray explained in an email about the store’s change of heart. “Well, we are happy to report that we can take another company off that list — Macy’s — who confirmed with 2nd Vote last week that they no longer give nor match donations to Planned Parenthood.”

In a month that’s seen record pushback against liberal companies like GrubHub, Kellogg’s, Target, and others, at least one retailer is getting the message consumers are sending — promote products, not politics. “We wanted to share this great news with you because the credit is due to our 2nd Vote members who have engaged Macy’s and other companies for their position on the life issue. This victory wouldn’t have been possible without your involvement,” Wray said. Now, the heat is on the other 36 CEOs who’ve taken the extreme risk of buying into Planned Parenthood’s deadly business model. And not just deadly, the House Select Panel on Infant Lives has decided, but criminal! Just last week, members referred President Obama’s favorite “charity” for prosecution for everything from selling baby body parts to violating patients’ privacy.

Of course, the most ironic part of these corporate partnerships is that Planned Parenthood doesn’t need the money! Apart from the more than half-billion-dollar haul from U.S. taxpayers, Cecile Richards’s group is enjoying hefty financial support from private donors on top of these household names: Adobe, American Express, Avon, Bank of America, Bath & Body Works, Ben & Jerry’s, Boeing, Clorox, Converse, Deutsche Bank, Dockers, Energizer, Expedia, ExxonMobil, Fannie Mae, Groupon, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, La Senza, Levi Strauss, Liberty Mutual, March of Dimes, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, Oracle, Pepsi, Pfizer, Progressive Insurance, Starbucks, Susan G. Komen, Tostitos, Unilever, United Way, Verizon, and Wells Fargo.

And while we are 100 percent supportive of corporations making their own decisions and setting their own policies, we believe that consumers have choices too — like taking their business elsewhere. That’s the beauty of the free market. If CEOs want to enter the culture wars, that’s their prerogative. But they shouldn’t be surprised when the market fires back. Our hats go off to Macy’s and the thousands of you who made the conscious decision to vote with your dollars this Christmas! For more on where your favorite brands stand this holiday season, check out 2ndVote.com.

Originally published here.

A Tale of Two Donalds

There’s been a lot of talk about the role the Supreme Court played in last month’s election — but what about the current justices? According to one columnist, the present Court may have had just as much to sway voters as any future nominees would. In a thoughtful article by David Bernstein in [yesterday’s] Washington Post, the George Mason University Foundation professor talks about the impact a certain marriage ruling may have had in cementing Americans’ choice for president.

Of course, plenty of ink has been spilled about Donald Trump’s unprecedented support from evangelicals — besting even churchgoing favorite George W. Bush. But some people are still wondering: What could have possibly made the controversial figure so popular with the country’s faith bloc? Bernstein argues that one issue motivated Christians more than any other to turn out and pull the lever for the real estate mogul. “To what can we attribute Trump’s success? The most logical answer is that their religious liberty was under assault from liberals, and they therefore had to hold their noses and vote for Trump.”

Using a laundry list of examples — from taking God out of the Democratic platform to prosecuting bakers for turning down same-sex wedding cake orders — Bernstein explains that it was the Left’s fierce assault on faith and conscience that drove evangelicals to the polls. The extremism, he argues, was never clearer than in the oral arguments of Obergefell – when, in one candid moment, the president’s top lawyer confirmed everyone’s worst fears: that the government would use a liberal ruling as a weapon to use against Christians.

Asked if religious schools could lose their tax-exempt status for holding a natural view of marriage, U.S. Solicitor Donald Verrilli was surprisingly honest. “[I]t’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is going to be an issue.” The admission was stunning, even to liberals. “If I were a conservative Christian (which I most certainly am not),” law professor Eugene Volokh said shortly after, “I would be very reasonably fearful, not just as to tax exemptions but as to a wide range of other programs — fearful that within a generation or so, my religious beliefs would be treated the same way as racist religious beliefs are.”

Obviously, Bernstein believes, that concern was shared by millions of evangelical voters. In a country where 53 percent still define marriage as the union of a man and woman, the writing on the wall was clear.

“Many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduce their deeply-held beliefs to ‘bigotry,’ but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions. When I first posted about this on Facebook, I wrote that I hope liberals really enjoyed running Brendan Eich out of his job and closing down the Sweet Cakes bakery, because it cost them the Supreme Court. I’ll add now that I hope Verrilli enjoyed putting the fear of government into the God-fearing because it cost his party the election.”

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.