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Corporate Watch Update Articles Expose Business Influence on Life and Family

TORONTO, Ontario, September 1, 2005, (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an era of increasingly large and impersonal global corporations it becomes difficult to know what and whom to trust. Some corporations are engaged in highly unethical practices while others attempt to take the high moral road in their business dealings. With more individuals desiring to boycott the bad, and support the good, accurate information is not only vitally important but also difficult to obtain.

Tony Gosgnach of The Interim, a monthly pro-life newspaper published in Toronto (along with its on-line component), provides just such information in a section entitled Corporate Watch Update, published four to six times per year in the paper. The Update covers Canadian, American and International Corporations, as well as actions and contributions made by various individuals such as company presidents and CEO’s.

Some of the items of interest mentioned during the last few months are:

An Associated Press story has described the Curves fitness chain, owned by pro-life supporter Gary Heavin of Waco, Tx., as a “franchise superpower.” It now boasts 8,400 franchises in 28 countries, making it by far the world’s number one fitness centre in terms of number of clubs.

A group of U.S. billionaires is pledging to donate tens of millions of dollars to develop what they call “progressive political ideas” to counter a conservative ascendancy in that country. The group includes the ubiquitous George Soros, savings and loan moguls Herb and Marion Sandler and insurance company chairman Peter Lewis. Their intention is to provide the left with Washington think tanks that can match those of the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

Several corporations are involved in fuelling the worldwide, $56 billion-per-year pornography market. A 2002 report by Concerned Women for America cited General Motors and AT&T as helping bring “the respectability-starved porn industry to Wall Street.” Hotel chains such as Marriott and Hilton, meanwhile, were reported to be making more money from pornography offerings in their hotel rooms than from snack and drink sales.

The website http://www.onemilliondads.com, which monitors objectionable media content and encourages the public to respond, is reporting a number of recent successes from its efforts. Among them, a number of companies have cancelled advertising on the racy TV program Desperate Housewives, including Safeway, Liberty Mutual, Kohl’s, Alberto Culver, Leapfrog, Tyson Foods and Lowe’s. Wrangler Jeans, Coca Cola and Sonic Drive-In, meanwhile, have backed off from advertising on the program The Shield, while Bayer, Red Lobster, and Allstate won’t be sponsoring Medium anymore.

The Exxon/Mobil corporation has rebuffed a seventh attempt to extend special rights to homosexuals at this year’s shareholders’ meeting. CEO Lee Raymond says, “As long as I’m CEO, we’re going to do what’s right.” Fewer than 30 per cent of shareholders favoured the extension of homosexual rights.

Solid and worth-while information helps each of us make informed moral decisions about where we shop, what we buy, where we invest and when to make our objections known so that we can have an impact for the better, no matter how small, on the world around us.

Check the online version of The Interim for current and past Corporate Watch Updates at
http://www.theinterim.com

Tony Gosgnach’s last 4 articles up to the July 2005 editon can be accessed online at:
http://www.theinterim.com/2005/july/corporateupdate.html http://www.theinterim.com/2005/june/corporatewatch.html http://www.theinterim.com/2005/mar/corporatewatch.html http://www.theinterim.com/2005/feb/corporatewatch.html

The August edition of the paper, with the Corporate Watch Update on Corporate funding of Gay Pride events is expected to be on line in the next few days.

To subscribe to the paper see http://www.theinterim.com/subscribe.html

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