The American Family Association’s (AFA) ads were part of a larger campaign to get PayPal members to cancel their accounts, following the online remittance service’s pullout from the US southeastern state of North Carolina.
PayPal had initially pledged to build its global operations centre in the state’s largest city, Charlotte. It was poised to provide some 400 high-income jobs there.
However, the USD$9 billion tech company pulled out after North Carolina passed a state law that would require people to use the bathroom based on the gender assigned on their birth certificate.
The law started a furore among LGBT activists and businesses, calling all companies to boycott the state.
Traditional American family proponent AFA then came to North Carolina’s defence, saying that PayPal was practising hypocrisy when it abandoned North Carolina, when the tech giant operated in countries where homosexuality was criminalised.
It was learnt that AFA had taken up an ad campaign in US newspapers to defend the restroom law, through a series of ads in newspapers and online signature campaigns.
Malaysian Colin Charles publicly shared the ad on Facebook, which has since gone viral.
The ad, which appeared in the San Jose Mercury newspaper yesterday read: “Dear PayPal, how can you build your global operations center in Malaysia where LGBT individuals are whipped and jailed…
“… but you boycott North Carolina for enacting a law requiring people to use a restroom consistent with their biological gender?
“Shouldn’t you be boycotting Malaysia rather than the people of North Carolina?”
In a press statement, AFA president Tim Wildmon said PayPal should stop bullying North Carolina for merely protecting women and children left vulnerable to predators.
“As a pro-family organisation that continually works to strengthen and protect families across America, we cannot sit idly by while a company like PayPal supports laws that put families at risk …
“… this is not about discrimination; this is about whether we want men to be allowed to enter the restrooms of our wives and daughters.
“Each individual at birth is biologically a male or female. This law simply ensures that men use men’s restrooms and women use women’s restrooms.”
Read more here: Losing PayPal may have cost Charlotte more jobs than announced