Thus reads the advertising tagline of Colorado Springs law firm McCormack & Murphy P.C. Shrewd marketing? Disturbingly exclusionary? A manifestation of sincere religious conviction? All of these? (David Lat, Above the Law, Aug. 31, who got it from Parenthetical Statement).
“Helping Christians who’ve been injured”
Thus reads the advertising tagline of Colorado Springs law firm McCormack & Murphy P.C. Shrewd marketing? Disturbingly exclusionary? A manifestation of sincere religious conviction? All of these? (David Lat, Above the Law, Aug. 31, who got it from Parenthetical Statement).
2 Comments
The blogger at Abovethelaw seems a bit overwrought about this.
Nothing in their ad copy suggests that they are denying their services to anyone else. There is nothing wrong with advertising ‘to’ christians in a non-exclusionary manner. The mere fact that they are not also directly marketing to non-christians is hardly an unspeakable crime.
I’m no great fan of lawyers who advertise, given our society’s glut of lawsuits, but this particular ad isn’t nearly as bad as the shrieks about it at the Parenthetical Statement link: particularly the “shocked and horrified by either such bigotry or such blatant pandering to the Focus on the Family geared residents of the Springs.” Nor do a see the relevance of that ad to an unblblical Jesus who “shunned the prostitute and snubbed the tax collector.” Jesus had both sorts among his followers, so this ad, had it been run circa 32 A.D., would have no doubt appealed to them.
Lawyers–despite their best efforts to convince us otherwise–are people and, as such, have every right to direct their advertising as they choose. I once knew a Chinese real estate agent who directed most of her attention at selling homes to fellow Chinese, (i.e. ads with her picture in Asian newspapers), since she understood them best. This is precisely the same thing.
The real issue behind the criticism is that, no longer able to look down their noses at blacks and Catholics, the dominant bigotry of the chattering classes shifted first to conservative/orthodox Christians (Catholic and Protestant) in the 1970s (due to their opposition to legalized abortion and sexual debauchery) and, more recently (post 9/11) to Jews who want to keep their Jewish identity, particularly by living in or supporting Israel.
On top of that, this writer at Parenthetical Statement seems clueless about “the values this nations was founded on.” Many of those who first settled this country did so because Europe, with its established state churches, only allowed one religious point of view in the public arena. English noncomformists (meaning non-Anglicans) had severe restrictions on what they could do and say quite similar to those this blogger is suggesting when he claims that this ad was “ruining the country” and “polarizing citizens,” and when he suggested that the ad was somehow less legal or ethical than any other attorney’s targeted advertisement (i.e. an ad directed at blacks or Hispanics). For such people, Catholics, Evangleicals and now Jews are non-persons and, in the context of this New Bigotry, they can only exist if they remain invisible, not advertising their POV professionally, not voting their convictions etc–exactly and precisely like nonconformists were treated in Old England.
And I must add that, while anyone is free to hold that POV, any effort to make that sort of bigotry a part of law or public policy, is blatently unconstitutional. The First Amendment, we should never forget, exists because the rural Baptists of Virginia, fearful their state’s Anglicans would import English laws, demanded that Madison add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution.
And, by the way, anyone who’s not totally clueless about religion in America would know that ad would appeal to “Focus on the Family geared residents” for a quite practical reason–because the lawyers are implictly promising to display the sort of niceness and willingness to forgive that Evangelicals value so highly. That sort of attitude is not common in law.
–Mike Perry, Seattle