June 28, 2008
Watch What You Drink At Pride
Pride weekend is an event which fosters imbibing—both the "spirited" and non-alcoholic kind. When stopping into a store for some hydration after burning under a hot sun, Pridegoers need to watch what they drink for an important reason: they may not like where their money is going when it comes to two popular beverage companies—Rockstar and Bolthouse Farms.
Rockstar
The Rockstar energy drink is ubiquitous throughout bars and corner stores in Toronto, but consumers may not be aware that the Las Vegas-based company was founded by Russell Weiner, the son of virulent anti-gay radio talk show host Michael Savage. Savage (né Weiner) has called same-sex parenting "child abuse," frequently calls gays "sodomites," and famously told one caller to "get AIDS and die." On gay rights, Savage asked his listeners to "think only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son."
Should the son be held accountable for the sins of the father, however? Not only is Savage a major investor in Rockstar who allegedy seeded the startup money, but Russell Weiner has made no secret that he shares his father's views. "Who's heterosexual and proud?", Weiner proclaimed to a cheering crowd of his father's fans. "If you're not, hopefully you will be soon!"
Father and son also co-founded the anti-immigration Paul Revere Society, which lists the same office address as Rockstar in Mill Valley, California. The PRS aims to enshrine English as the only official language in the Unites States, to immediately deport all illegal immigrants, and to make the Bible as important to American lawmaking as the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. On his nationally syndicated, hugely popular third-rated show south of the border, Savage has also called for an outright and total ban on Muslim immigration.
Bolthouse Farms
For the consumer avoiding the caffeine and high fructose corn syrup of Rockstar energy drinks, Bolthouse Farms may be a popular all-natural choice. The company was founded by William Bolthouse, who most recently donated $100,000 to the National Organization for Marriage California, which aims to overturn the California Supreme Court decision that allows same-sex marriage.
It must be noted that William Bolthouse no longer has a controlling stake in the company, which was bought out by Madison Dearborn Partners in 2005. The Bolthouse family apparently still owns about 40% of Bolthouse Farms, however, and the beverage company's current corporate mission statement proclaims:
The purpose of this company is to glorify God through our business transactions, our work, and our relationships. It is further our desire to bring honor and glory to the Name of Jesus Christ by following God's word in all our dealings with employees, suppliers, and customers. God's Work as contained in His Inspired Scriptures will be the final authority in all Corporate matters concerning direction, decisions, and disputes.The Bolthouse family is currently helming the tax-exempt Bolthouse Foundation, a charity that has donated significant sums of money to the Bush presidential campaign, same-sex marriage opponents, and right-wing, fundamentalist religious groups. In PR damage/diversion control, Bolthouse Farms tries to distance itself from any current connections with the Bolthouse Foundation by pointing out that they are two unconnected entities, yet Bolthouse Farms President and CEO Andre Radandt was a family-groomed successor to William Bolthouse (Radandt has said that he uses "business as a platform for ministry"), and Radandt and his wife are both trustees of the Bolthouse Foundation. With the family fortune being rooted in the drink company in which they still own a premium stake, it's obvious how at least some of the drink profits are being applied.
Drink Responsibly
Rockstar and Bolthouse Farms products are sold everywhere all along the parade route, as well as in stores and bars within the gaybourhood. While the products themselves may be delicious, their histories may be especially unpalatable to consumers during a weekend that is meant to celebrate LGBT equality.
Top image by Basic Framework in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Other images via their respective companies.
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Fantastic article. These kind of articles help everyone make informed decisions when shopping. Bolthouse is off my grocery list forever now! Thankfully, I never drank that Rock Star sugar crap. This kind of investigative journalism should be a regular feature!
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Yes this is a good article.
I have to say that I would avoid rockstar for reasons that have nothing to do with the owner...more the fact that it tastes like sugary vomit.
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Thanks for writing this. No more Boathouse for me and i'll continue never drinking Rockstar.
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It was also Bolthouse Carrot juice that poisoned a number of people several years ago, giving them botulism -- although the company denies any responsibility, and says the consumers were at fault.
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Its worth noting that opposing gay marriage is not quite the same as being anti-gay.
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I didn't say that Bolthouse was anti-gay, although some of the groups the foundation has donated to certainly are.
Savage, on the other hand, is as anti-gay as they get.
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That's true. I do agree that Savage is anti-gay and not worth any attention. My comment wasn't a criticism of your article, just an important point worth remembering.
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There's something about:
The purpose of this company is to glorify God through our business transactions
that seems silly.
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If discovering some of your favourite drinks are bankrolling anti-gay equality politics and social movements has got your all depressed and confused, you might want to avoid Scientology while you're at it: Homosexuality and Scientology
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Yeah, don't forget Bolthouse products responsible for destroying these two people's lives:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/09/botulism.html
but they blamed the consumers:
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2006/10/11/carrot-juice.html?ref=rss
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OK, but I never wanted anything to do with Scientology in the first place. I suspect I'm in the majority on this one.
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EXCELLENT article! This is exactly what Torontoist (and more frankly, other news and media) needs more of! Great information here, thanks for opening my eyes a bit more.
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Great article, it would make a great regular feature to dissect the companies behind products like this.
I'm pretty sure god wouldn't want to be glorified through a fruit smoothie... but what would I know.
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"Its worth noting that opposing gay marriage is not quite the same as being anti-gay."
Really? I would say wanting to deny a group of people a legal right would be anti-those people, no?
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Stacey: Not really, you're making the same folly that pro-choice people make. If a society gives males the legal right to beat their wives then those who want to take that right away are not necessarily anti-male; arguably they never should never have had that right in the first place. The same can be said of gay marriage, despite the fact that abortion and beating your wife involve harming another.
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Yeah let's drag abortion into this. Maybe gun con-troll after that?
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Go find something non-incendiary to post about. TROLL. Who would have thought that challenging the left's sacred dogma could strike such a nerve?
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I really like this. Never bothered to check out Bolthouse Farms' history, and I drink copious amounts of their smoothies.
Maybe you should start a new section: Consumerist!
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Wow, this article is great!
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"Who would have thought that challenging the left's sacred dogma could strike such a nerve?"
persecution complex much?
being anti gay marrige isnt being anti gay? bullshit, that "debate" is just the last politically acceptable way for people who hate gays to publicly denounce them.
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Bias: It's that kind of attitude towards those who challenge the cardinal elements of neo-liberalism that make the left so ideologically intolerant.
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There are some good bits in the Bible. "Treat others as you would wish to be treated" and "Judge not lest you be judged" come to mind. However, obscure bits of Leviticus have absolutely no relevance to modern life and certainly do not allow "believers" or anyone else to restrict the rights of others.
I am 52 and single. While I don't happen to be Gay, I do understand the reaction I would have if I met someone I loved and someone else tried to restrict me from getting married for whatever reason - different race, different religion, older than me, younger than me etc. Restricting Gay marriage is definitely anti-Gay and should not be tolerated. If an individual has internal feelings of homosexual attraction, and because of that person's religious beliefs decides to remain personally celibate, that is a fully supportable manifestation of that religion. However, projecting those beliefs onto someone else's life is not acceptable.
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"If an individual has internal feelings of homosexual attraction, and because of that person's religious beliefs decides to remain personally celibate, that is a fully supportable manifestation of that religion. However, projecting those beliefs onto someone else's life is not acceptable."
Whether or not gay marriage should be legal is a wholly different issue from a justification of the right to homosexual relations. When deciding what should and what should not constitute marriage the issue essentially comes down to semantics and definitions. To use an analogy, some people oppose gay marriage for the same reason that we would all oppose expanding the definition of apples to include oranges. If we can expand the traditional notion of marriage to include same sex couples, then where do the amendments stop? Should relationships between human and animal become eligible? How about polygamy? To eradicate "...the gender roles and norms specific to the marriage construct...", as Stacey describes the expansion, is what some see as opening the door to a multitude of other marriages.
Now this may not happen very quickly, but it could begin a rather problematic slippery slope.
Rek, this is your time to troll away!
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It isn't a matter of just semantics and definitions unless there is full parity between marriage and unions, which there often isn't—but if there is full equality between a hetero marriage and a gay civil union, there isn't then any reason not to call it marriage since it is exactly the same thing. Also, expanding the definition to include gay couples isn't affecting the existing definition (or the respective marriages within it) one iota, but expanding it to be inclusive, which hurts nobody.
The argument oft-trotted out by opponents is that marriage is a religious ceremony that has remained unchanged for thousands of years, which it isn't and hasn't. Obviously, the religious element is important to a lot of people for their own marriage, and that's fine and nobody is trying to take that away. As for "traditional" marriage, traditional marriage was a property transaction between groom and the bride's father, the chattel being the woman (of which the man was permitted to have multiple of)—all God and Bible sanctioned.
And then there is the flawed "when does it stop?" argument. Animals can't consent to marriage (nor is anyone forming worldwide rights movements calling for interspecies marriage); nor can children consent; nor is polygamy even remotely connected to the marriage of two same-sex people.
And if men want to marry multiple wives (because it is almost never the opposite) and deal with the tangled legality of marriage contracts, inheritance, life insurance, divorces, etc., then the polygamist community can pull themselves together and try and get it with due process. But I reiterate that it isn't even remotely the same thing as permitting gay marriages.
If you believe that gay people deserve to be treated equally to heterosexual people, and love and commit and form families with the consenting adult they choose, to deny them marriage is simply rooted in mean-spiritedness, and pretty much nullifies the concept of equality and what marriage means.
Plus, the sky hasn't fallen and hetero marriages haven't collapsed en masse in the countries that allow gay people to marry. Frankly, I don't even understand why people get so upset about it when it doesn't affect them any more than hetero couples they don't even know who get hitched.
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Splitting hairs and using a lot of rhetoric does not absolve the intolerant. Some people oppose Gay Marriage because they are intolerant. What others do that does not affect our lives is none of any of our business. The fact of the matter is that our society has been intolerant (hateful) towards Gays in the past. Some societies still are and some Gays and Lesbians come to our country for refuge. If Gays and Lesbians wish to get married others have no right to interfere in their lives. To do so is intolerable and wrong. As Canada Day approaches, I celebrate the fact that we are for the most part a tolerant country that accepts all as they are. There is room for political debate in some areas. Not everyone is as socially liberal as me. However, when it comes to opposing two people who love each other from committing to each other in the method that our society uses for such commitment - that is intolerable.
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opposing gay marriage is about as anti-gay as you can get.
Pickletoes. For all your (lack of) reasoning. Give me one good reason why gay's should not be allowed to get married that is NOT anti-gay?
There is none. There is no proper justification at all.
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That is SO upsetting about Bolthouse Farms. Their Mango Lemonade is divine and I just discovered their coffee smoothie...so good. :(
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Marc, you just made me SO sad about Bolthouse Farms! Rockstar always tasted evil to me, so I'm not greatly surprised, but I am devoted to Bolthouse juices and baby carrots!
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I agree...pretty much everything Bolthouse is delicious.
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If you argued women shouldn't be allowed to vote, or black people aren't people, from a religious basis (as it used to be done), you'd be rightly accused of being anti-women or anti-black. There's no difference when it comes to being anti-gay marriage.
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Marc: You misrepresented my post so bad that I don't even care to correct you, let alone post a constructive reply.
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I'm gonna take "you're so wrong that I'm not even going to bother correcting you" as code for "you're right and I can't effectively counter your argument."
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I'm going to see your latest post for what it is: yet another straw man. Put succinctly, I don't have the time or patience to type a methodical reply to critique an ill informed critique, let alone the fact that the position which you critiqued is not my own. I don't care enough to do it because I was only being the Devil's Advocate. Although since you haven't been able to grasp some of the more explicit things I've written, I doubt you picked up on that either.
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Using the What's next? People marrying their pets? slippery slope banality is the ultimate straw man argument. I'd like to see your critique of my points, because I think they're solid, and why you think they're ill-informed.
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Twinkletoes is using the "I am above you" argument. In fact he or she has run out of logical reasons to debate the obvious position and now uses the "I don't have time" for people like you arrogance. Take that argument for what it is worth.
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Marc: Haha, fine, I'll try and type something up when I'm back from work. Until then, I will say that your points are not intrinsically ill informed Marc, but when taken as a critique of what I wrote they make undue and improper conclusions about my words. They sound to me a lot like talking points.
Max: I'm not using the "above you" argument and I literally "don't have time" right now. Marc wrote a very intricate post and its obvious that any proper reply would be similarly sophisticated. So before saying that I've "run out of logical reasons", stop and think that maybe I've run out of the time to express them.
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Why does everyone have to argue ad nauseam on the comment posts...people do you really think that you are going to change the other person's mind...why can't we all just respect the fact that everyone has the choice to think what they want about a subject.