Anti-Gay General Mills Protesters Mistake Hospitality For Bullying

All week, anti-gay activists are “dumping General Mills” outside the company’s headquarters in Minnesota to protest its opposition to the state’s marriage inequality amendment. The protests have been dismal, with only two or three dozen people bothering to show up — even less without counting  their children. Jeremy Hooper points out now that the Minnesota for Marriage protesters are pretending to be victims as an excuse for their small numbers. Andy Parrish, Deputy Campaign Manager for the anti-equality coalition, tweeted the following today:

@generalmills VP and Head of Security’s presence at our rally to intimidate their employees from joining us ‪#stribpol‬ pic.twitter.com/FCGs9aeM

It’s unclear from this random picture who the vice president and head of security are or what it is they are doing to “intimidate” anybody. Perhaps they are sitting on the bench — how very off-putting. A legitimate group of corporate protesters would be grateful for the access and opportunity to engage with individuals in leadership positions, but apparently not Minnesota for Marriage.
Further, General Mills employees have actually taken very good care of their dissenters, offering the best in Midwestern hospitality:

Employees of General Mills responded to protesters by offering them coffee or ice water with slices of lemon. There would have been cookies too, except the protesters said they’d accept them only to add to the smattering of ‘dumped’ food they had collected. “It’s the neighborly thing to do,” Tom Forsythe spokesman for General Mills explained the unexpected hospitality. “I was raised as a Minnesotan, and when people drop by your house, you put on coffee, so that’s what we did.”

This is how the anti-gay movement works. They attempt to intimidate a company, and then claim that they are the ones being intimidated because they didn’t want cookies. It doesn’t get much pettier.