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Ellen DeGeneres is standing up against One Million Moms, an antigay group protesting JCPenney’s hiring of Ellen as a spokesperson for the company. Following the announcement of Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage in California, being ruled unconstitutional by the 9th circuit on Monday, Ellen took the opportunity to address the great news for equality and discuss the issue of One Million Moms’ boycott on her show.
Ellen doesn’t usually like to pay attention to her haters but in this case she said she wanted to talk about it “because my haters are my motivators.”
"There was some good news for marriage equality in California yesterday," Ellen said. "For a long time, same-sex marriage was not legal. Then, here in California, it was legal for like 25 minutes. Then it was not legal again because of something called Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage. And I'm happy to say that yesterday an appeals court ruled that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.”
Retail giant JCPenney, “stands behind its partnership with Ellen DeGeneres," despite One Million Moms threatening boycotts of the store if they didn’t fire Ellen solely based on the fact that Ellen is gay. The group issued a statement on their Facebook Page stating, among other things, “By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon, JCPenney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful to them over all these years.”
Ellen said that she thought once JCPenney didn’t back down that the story would go away, but it didn’t. Ellen read the group’s statement from their Facebook Page to the audience, and pointed out a few important things to remember.
“First of all, being gay or pro-gay isn't a bandwagon. You don't get a free ride anywhere. There's no music. And occasionally we'll sing 'We Are Family' but that's about it."
"Secondly, they said a majority of JCPenney shoppers will be offended and not shop there anymore,” she added. “I'd like to read just a few comments from the Million Moms Facebook page. This is on their page. And not that there's anyone counting, but for a group that calls themselves a Million Moms, they only have 40,000 members on their page. So they're rounding up to the nearest million and I get that."
She read a few of the comments, which supported her partnership with JCPenney, and closed by telling everyone why she decided to talk about the situation on her show.
"I usually don't talk about stuff like this on my show, but I really want to thank everyone who is supporting me," Ellen said. "Here are the values I stand for. I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you'd want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values. That's what I stand for…I also believe in dance."
Check out the clip below:
