Why Did Wal-Mart Go Gay?

That's the frothy headline for Kevin McCullough's recent Townhall column about the Bentonville Behemoth's decision to have a "Wal-Mart Vice President now sit on the [National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce] task force."

Without explaining exactly what Wal-Mart is doing, McCullough waxes elegiac about the good old days at the nation's–indeed, the world's–largest retailer, when he shopped there "for tools, electronics, camping gear and other life essentials" without having to worry about running into the Rosie O'Donnells of retail (she was too busy, one assumes, cruising K Mart aisles with Penny Marshall):

During college basketball days when the team would be on the road, we never felt far from home if we could load up on CD's, Slim-Jims (the beef snack—not automobile door openers), and Mountain Dew, and zip through the smiley face check-out lane.

Now that's all ashes because Wal-Mart has gone tuitty-fruitty. By McCullough's own lights, what Wal-Mart does with its time and money should be of little concern to anyone other than the company's stockholders and employees:

It's not my business if you're shacking up with your girlfriend but you don't have the chutzpah to marry her. It's God's business—but not mine. If you're openly cheating on your married spouse—you are the one who will have to pay the price for that knowledge being public. But then again, who would benefit if you did? Whatever your appetite in sexual desire, men, women, pets, and blow-up dolls—in a civilized society—it should never be in good taste to discuss it publicly.

So why is Wal-Mart now spending resources in time, attention and money to promote same gender sexual behavior?… Would they do the same for adulterers? Pedophiles? Men who like sheep?

Let's leave aside the gratuitous–but ubiquitous–conservative equation of homosexuality with bestiality for the moment and wonder if Wal-Mart might know its business better than Blue State cons such as McCullough, who seem to be too busy prancing about in modern Sodom to check out the low, low prices available in the real America:

Admittedly I haven't been in a Wal-Mart in about three years. New York City seems to have a chip on its shoulder about them and won't seem to let them come with arm's reach of Manhattan.

Can Wal-Mart's bottom line survive the alienation of former customers? We'll just have to wait and see, especially since McCullough calls for his readers to print out a protest letter and send it to Wal-Mart execs.

Whole thing here.