It left a mark

The Susan G. Komen Foundation, it appears, has Screwed the Pooch.

Sunday morning the Dallas Morning News ran an article quoting current and former advisory board members and long-time donors, the majority of whom say they are done with Komen.  Some going so far as to say that the Komen Board of Directors could never again be trusted.

“Under increasing fire Thursday, Susan G. Komen for the Cure responded to critics who accused the nation’s top breast-cancer fundraiser of caving to anti-abortion pressures when it cut Planned Parenthood’s funding”

WBUR, Boston’s public radio station, aired a program that spells out the very unwise nature of involving politics in such sensitive, heartfelt and personal matters. Public relations expert Dawn Gilpin, a professor at from Arizona State University, highlights how this incident will serve as a guidepost, both for the fundamentalists and the nonprofits, for any such effort in the future:

“This is going to be a sidebar whenever a nonprofit does something political. It's going to be used in classes, as in, 'Don't do this.”

In other words, when any charity sees the religionistas coming they will bar the doors. More beneficial than that would be if the wingnuts would learn just how much resistance they will face when trying to push these dogmatic, divisive agenda items... but likely that is too much to expect.

We can't expect them to go away any more than we could hope the Westboro Baptist Church loons would suddenly understand that vulgar protest at warrior's funerals is a bad idea, but maybe for a while the trolls will go back under the bridge and quit trying to insert theocratic politics into a society that clearly is not interested.

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