Action Alert Update: The Tennessee Equality Project and the Nashville GLBT Chamber of Commerce ask that you send them your receipts from stores other than Kroger and Harris Teeter from now to June 17. This immediate and short term action is good news, but it should be followed up with a much stronger action!
Nashville Kroger stores have removed Out and About -- a newspaper serving the gay community of Tennessee -- from the distribution racks at 34 area stores.
The people who run Nashville Kroger stores really need to move to a much smaller and more bigoted town. This city is too big, too diverse, and too gay for the likes of the apparent small-minded bigots who think a stack of gay newspapers over in the hard-to-access cluttered corner of a grocery store is controversial. It wasn't, but it is now!
Gay City News:
Being able to distribute the Tennessee gay newspaper Out and About newspaper (O&AN) throughout Tennessee at the grocery store super-chain Kroger was a big deal for Tennessee's LGBT community. The arrangement, announced in late April, enabling O&AN to be available in 34 Kroger stores and three Harris Teeter stores, was heralded by community leaders as a positive step toward equality and visibility.
"When we signed the contract with DistribuTech and wrote the first check for almost $1,800, we felt like we'd made history," reported Jerry Jones, O&AN publisher. The arrangement was similar to an existing relationship Kroger has with Southern Voice, the weekly gay newspaper for Atlanta. Not anymore.
On May 31, Kroger ordered DistribuTech to pull the newspaper from its free racks with no explanation except to say that "publications with a religious or political agenda, were and are removed and are not permitted. The racks are for real estate, auto, health, and neighborhood-type publications only."
Kroger does plenty of things that offend me -- like saving so much money on the air in the deadly summer heat that items in the dairy case are actually warm and limp, and like poor service, and like forcing middle-aged cashiers to stand for so many hours that they will all need back surgery long before they retire.
Let the women sit down for god's sake!
Obviously Kroger is a store with many flaws. But this latest -- taking a stand that tells the world that the big city of Nashville is so provincial and small minded and bigotted that it can't tolerate the thought of a gay newspaper over there in the cluttered and hard-to-access corner of its grocery store (or in the newsracks outside some stores) is simply beyond the pale.
Tell the store with the anti-gay agenda what you think via their comment form.
What they're saying:
Equality group and gay chamber call for community action on Kroger discrimination
Boycott Kroger!
Kroger Co. to gays...out of Groceries?
Homophobic Kroger Pulls Gay Rag
Dispute over gay newspaper's removal grows - Gays, lesbians urged to avoid Kroger
Out With Out & About
Local GLBT groups criticize Kroger on magazine stance
Boycott? I’ll Drink to That
Kroger yanks ‘Out and About’ saying it promotes ‘agenda’
Gay News Out and About Kroger Gay Rights Nashville Tennessee Homophobia Politics
