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Kroger: Right (Wing?) Store’s Wrongs Are No Victory for Gay Rights

When Kroger banned Out & About newspaper from 34 Nashville-area Kroger stores and three Harris Teeter stores on May 31, they may have been just getting started. In June, Kroger expanded its effort to cleanse its stores of all things homosexual when music by openly gay performers was banned from its stores, a confidential source told the Nashville Scene. According to the source inside Kroger headquarters in Cincinatti, Ohio, all of the chain’s stores nationwide will be silent when it comes to piping in Elton John, Melissa Etheridge and other openly gay recording artists.

In the newspaper flap, a Kroger spokeswoman first claimed it had removed the LGBT-oriented Out and About because the paper promoted a political, religious or other specific agenda, a violation of company policy. Then on July 2, Kroger Group Vice President of Corporate Affairs Lynn Marmer issued a written statement explaining that the original ban on Out & About was because “standard procedures” for approving distribution had not been followed by DistribuTech, the company contracted to fill the free publication bins at the grocery stores. Perhaps Kroger took a page from Karl Rove’s war spin: if your initial excuse backfires, just pick a new reason to justify your actions and spin again.

The “distribution procedure” spin came on the same day the grocer agreed to return Out & About to eight Nashville-area stores. Even though the paper’s return results in a net loss of distribution in 26 stores, or more than 75 percent, gay groups were quick to declare a victory. Christopher Sanders, president of the Tennessee Equality Project, was quoted on Out & About’s Website describing the “compromise” as “a victory for good business, dialogue and cooperation.”

Out & About Publisher Jerry Jones was reportedly “extremely pleased” that the store was returning his paper to the eight stores with the highest readership, based on readership data used to pick where the paper will be allowed. Jones said his paper only ever wanted distribution in a handful of stores but was required by DistribuTech to pay for the entire region. The paper is apparently not concerned if its readers are left unserved if there are less than 300 of them in their zip code. Meanwhile, letters to the editor and comments on the Out & About’s Website indicate some readers are disappointed that their neighborhood Kroger will still not stock the paper.

What’s interesting about this controversy is the “mission accomplished” attitude in the face of a dramatic failure to widely distribute a gay newspaper in the Nashville area. In the effort to work with those who seek to marginalize and demonize the community, LGBT leaders seem determined to see the glass as half full, even when there’s less than a fourth actually there.

What’s more, in all the crowing by Out & About, the Tennessee Equality Project, the Nashville GLBT Chamber of Commerce and others, there’s been not a peep about the reported ban on gay music by Kroger nationwide. The Nashville Scene story went curiously silent and mum was the word on music as a part of the compromise. If true, the ban on gay musicians nationwide is even more aggregious than the homophobia apparent in Kroger’s Nashville region.

Whether bowing to right-wing Christian Conservative pressure as suggested by Jones in a Nashville Scene article or stemming from a deep-rooted homophobia at Kroger corporate or a bit of both, the grocer clearly takes no stock in its own anti-discrimination policy. And there’s little rationale for the declaration of victory by gay activists and publishers.