East Coast snobs find it outrageous that dirt-eating fundamentalists would dare employ a protest tactic ordained by God for use only by Episcopalians, Unitarians and delegates to the Democratic National Convention. In addition, some avant-garde critics view the Southern Baptist resolution as a direct attack on the constitutional wall of separation between church and sinners. But Baptists have rights, too, and their condemnation of Disney fits into a long and venerable tradition. Americans have tried to use economic snubbery as a means of political and moral suasion since the Boston Tea Party. Nobody goes to the corner store for salvation, especially when something is on sale, and consumers gleefully overlook unseemly behavior by producers when manufacturers deliver the goods.
Boycotts are good for one thing, and that's moral chest-thumping.
Caesar Chavez spent 25 years leading a series of bold, endless and failed protests of lettuce and grape producers. He got his secular sainthood, and the Gallo family got rich. Nevertheless, we will always have exhibitionist malcontents among us. I was hooked. The Internet teems with boycott solicitations.