Listen to this articleThe Idaho Values Alliance, a conservative so-called “family values” group, applauded its members for helping to get cards celebrating gay marriage from several Hallmark Card stores in Treasure Valley.
“Great news on the culture front! The owners of the seven local Hallmark stores, which all go by the name ‘Jordan’s Hallmark,’ will not stock the corporation’s newly developed homosexual-marriage greeting cards,” an Aug 25 message on the group’s Web site, idahovaluesalliance.org read.
The seven stores announced that they would not carry the cards, which Hallmark had yet to release to stores, on Aug. 22 after receiving a number of complaints.
“I have had people saying they would no longer shop at Hallmark based on the fact that Hallmark is carrying them,” Cassi Jacobsen, an assistant manager for Nampa’s Hallmark store, told the Idaho Press-Tribune on Aug. 22.
In the Aug. 25 Web posting, Bryan Fischer, IVA’s executive director, said he had a phone conversation with the family that owned the seven stores in which they claimed to have been “blindsided” by Hallmark and “made it clear that they would not stock the card in any case because of their personal values, which are shaped by the Judeo-Christian tradition.:
“Realize that if gay activists get their way, and introduce ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ protections into Idaho law, these owners could be sued for discrimination for their conscience-driven decision not to sell pro-gay greeting cards,” Fischer wrote.
He encouraged IVA members to support Jordan’s Hallmark for “doing the right thing” by buying their next “special occasion” cards at one of the seven locations.
Among its values, IAV lists its support for “religous [sic] liberty, the sanctity of marriage and the family, the sanctity of life, and to restrain judicial activism.”
