Time To Put Orbitz On Hold For A While

Orbitz is financing fascism in the United States by advertising on Fox News. Drop Fox is making frequent travelers aware of Orbitz's advertising policy and what that has been doing to our country. Several other organizations have backed them up and here's the letter LGBT groups like Courage Campaign, GLAAD and Equality Matters sent to Barney Harford, CEO of Orbitz:

Dear Mr. Harford,

It has recently come to our attention that your company buys advertising on Fox News Channel. Orbitz prides itself on being a good friend to the LGBT community, and we are writing you to raise our concerns about your association with a network that advances destructive anti-gay rhetoric.

Your gay-specific travel site has been warmly received in the gay community, has resulted in higher quality service for the LGBT community and has achieved an increase in growth for Orbitz. Additionally, in the last few years, leading LGBT organizations Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD have recognized the great work that Orbitz has done in partnering with and catering to the LGBT community.

In that same time period, Fox News demonstrated an indefensible bias in its coverage of core issues for the LGBT community. An analysis of coverage on everything from gay marriage to the repeal of DADT to gay individuals supports a conclusion that Fox's coverage is driven by a political agenda and cannot be considered an objective news source.

Here are a few examples of where Fox News acted in clear opposition to the best interest of the LGBT community:

Fox News gave Mike Huckabee his own show despite a history of comparing homosexuality to drug abuse, incest, pedophilia, and necrophilia. Huckabee has repeatedly used his Fox platform to campaign against gay marriage, even insultingly suggesting that marriage equality poses a threat to stable society.

Bill O' Reilly has repeatedly used his popular and prime time show to warn against the "dangers" of allowing gay people near children, to assert that same-sex marriage could lead to nuptials with turtles, ducks or dolphins, and to baselessly claim that implementing a hate crimes bill could protect pedophiles.

Fox News repeatedly perpetuated lies that repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell would impact troop readiness and morale, despite multiple reports-- including the Pentagon's-- to the contrary.

These campaigns of misinformation, smears, and flat-out lies-- which are propagated throughout Fox News' programming, including its so-called news shows-- do real damage to our families and communities. They also call attention to the fact that by supporting Fox News, Orbitz is supporting an organization committed to advancing an agenda that demeans many of your customers and advocates limiting their civil rights. It also undermines Orbitz's laudable support for the LGBT community.

Given the tenacity with which Fox is committed to this agenda as demonstrated by an enclosed compendium of its coverage, it is our sincere hope that you will rethink your decision to support them financially through ad revenue.

We welcome the opportunity to discuss this further.

Financial support from Big Business allowed for the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. The time to nip it in the bud is now, not when it's too late. Please consider signing the Courage Campaign petition here and please consider using another service until Orbitz stops financing all the hate on O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck and the rest of them. Fox News’ history of destructive anti-gay language and actions includes:

· Giving Mike Huckabee his own show despite Huckabee’s history of comparing homosexuality to drug abuse, incest, pedophilia, and necrophilia. Huckabee has repeatedly used his Fox platform to campaign against gay marriage, and he has suggested that marriage equality poses a threat to stable society.

· Bill O’ Reilly repeatedly using his popular prime time show to warn against the “dangers” of allowing gay people near children, to assert that same-sex marriage could lead to polygamy, nuptials with turtles, ducks or dolphins, and to claim that implementing a hate crimes bill could protect pedophiles.

· Perpetuating the claim that repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would impact troop readiness and morale, despite multiple reports-- including the Pentagon’s-- to the contrary.

“Orbitz loves gay dollars and, we hope, LGBT people, but by funding homophobes and charlatans like hosts Bill O'Reilly and Mike Huckabee, Orbitz sends the wrong message,” said Courage Campaign Founder and Chair Rick Jacobs. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can go to plenty of other travel sites. We count on Orbitz to do the right thing and stop buying advertising on Fox News Channel so that LGBT people can continue to shop with Orbitz. The alternatives are clear.”

THE PAKISTANI EQUIVALENT OF STONEWALL? PROBABLY NOT

The first time I went to an Afghani wedding something very much astounded me-- well, more than something, many things. It was 1969 and it was in a small city southwest of Kabul, Ghazni. I was staying with some college pals who were living and working there and we all got invited to a wedding. The first thing I noticed was a total separation of the sexes. The women-- including the bride, the groom's mother and sisters, etc.-- were in a different part of the house and we never saw them. So the wedding was kind of like a bachelor's party or maybe two bachelor's parties, one for men and another for women-- although not seperate-but-equal. The men were served a sumptuous feast. Servants and dogs were fed after we were done and then leftovers were sent to the women. That was all pretty shocking-- and I know that less than 30 years later our clueless commander in chief thinks he's building a pluralistic, democratic, secular society there (on the cheap... and fast) which is safe for women. That's called arrogance, cultural imperialism and hubris.

But what I saw as the inequality-- and even abuse-- for the women wasn't even the most shocking aspect of the wedding. After dinner the entertainment commenced. There was a small band that had been hired-- and a troupe of young drag queens. The band played traditional music and the drag queens danced. They were pretty bawdy. And many of them were pretty young. Everyone was smoking some powerful opium-laced hashish from Mazar-i-Sharif but many of the guests seemed genuinely disturbed when the groom's grandfather grabbed one of the young boys and dragged him behind a building and had his way with him. Later the boy, straightening his disheveled garb, came back and danced some more.

When I first saw this headline online-- After Drag Queens Are Beaten Up... Villagers Attack Taliban-- my immediate thought was some kind of incident between transvestites and Muslim fundamentalists in NY's Greenwich Village. But it turns out to be a report on an incident in a small town near the village of Adbulkhel, Pakistan, not far from Afghanistan.

The culture of the Pathan tribes on either side of the Afghan-Pakistan border are identical. The border is a colonial construct that has no relevance to their lives except as a sometimes annoyance. When Taliban religionist zealots beat up the local drag queens, shaved their heads and took away their instruments-- they react to nonconformity and music the same way, albeit usually more violently, western religionist zealots do-- the villagers got into a pitched battle, using heavy weapons and rockets, with the Taliban extremists.

The Afghan-Pakistan tribal regions seem like an utterly different world-- or millennium-- from Pakistan's big cities. And, in fact, the central government is engaged in a fierce and probably unwinnable war-- a very bloody one-- against the tribal areas right now. Karachi has different tribes, different cultures, different mores than the traditional-- and very primitive-- northwest. Small town, traditional hijras are very different from drag queens in the westernized big cities.