Seasons come and seasons go, but the mean-spiritedness of some American Christian conservatives endures. Here is a bunch of people who are never happier than when denigrating or boycotting imagined enemies.</p>
<p>You think Christmas is the season to be jolly? How naive. It is the time to attack stores such as Target and Wal-Mart that wish their customers Happy Holidays, the US phrase for Christmas, Hanukkah and the African festival Kwanzaa, instead of Happy Christmas. Bill OReilly, the Fox television commentator, has led the crusade on behalf of Santa Claus.</p>
<p>On the point that people should feel free to say Happy Christmas and to sing carols, I am with Mr OReilly. But his tactics to hector companies that do not comply are unpleasant. Retailers are not the only ones: many US companies are targets of Christian zealots trying to ensure that nobody tolerates what they abhor.</p>
<p>The average company gets very uncomfortable when accused of offending customers and its first instinct is to conciliate. Ford appeared to comply with the Christian right last month when it stopped advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in magazines for gay people.</p>
<p>That did no good since it promptly faced an outcry from the other side: gay and lesbian groups. Ford says the whole affair was a misunderstanding but it eventually did the right thing by reinstating its advertisements and telling the American Family Association, a noisy Christian lobby group, where to get off.</p>
<p>The lesson is that companies have to fight fire with fire: they must take a moral stand when confronted by moralisers. It is no use complying with activists because it seems to be in their financial interests. Not only may someone demand the opposite, but it is an indefensible stance.</p>
<p>In Fords case, one group of customers had no right to tell it to cut off business with another. The next step would have been to insist that it did not sell cars to gays or adulterers. Fords eventual position that it would not discriminate in this way was ethically correct.</p>
<p>Compare this with the case of US cable television companies. Christian groups are unhappy at the lack of say that cable subscribers have over the service they get. Those that opt for more than the basic service are often beamed hundreds of channels even if they only want a few (the average family tunes into only 17).</p>
<p>Christian groups say this means they cannot screen out channels with sex and violence on them, a complaint backed by Kevin Martin, head of the Federal Communications Commission. Mr Martin wants cable companies such as Comcast to give subscribers more choice, either allowing them to choose à la carte or giving them family-friendly channel tiers.</p>
<p>Grudgingly, the cable companies are introducing family tiers but grumble that this upsets their financial model. Small networks attract advertising because they get into many homes (even if they are hardly watched).
If cable subscribers could pick and choose, such networks might either have to demand higher subscription fees to compensate for the drop in advertising, or close down.</p>
<p>This may be true but it misses the point: the Christians are on the side of liberty. If some parents want to protect their children from unsavoury programmes, why should they be frustrated? Whatever the truth of the cable companies figures, they are trying to rebut an ethical argument with a financial one. It is no wonder that they are on the retreat.