A conservative US special interest group known has called for global e-commerce giant PayPal to pull out of its corporate activities in Malaysia, due to what it calls Malaysia’s practice of “whipping and jailing” individuals from the LGBT – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender – community.
But before local LGBT activists celebrate this outing of Malaysia’s mistreatment of them, they should know that the organisation behind the attack on PayPal is the American Family Association – a group that espouses fundamentalist Christian values and one that has vocally opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, and abortion.
The AFA’s attack on PayPal was published as a full-page ad on the San Jose Mercury News, which is circulated in an area very close to home for an online giant like PayPal: Silicon Valley.
The ad calls out PayPal for setting up its global operations centre in Malaysia, which it says whips and jails LGBTG individuals, but chooses to boycott the US state of North Carolina, which recently passed transgender-hostile laws that include forcing transgender individuals to use public restrooms that correspond to their “biological gender” – meaning, a transgender woman would have to use a men’s restroom under law.
A press statement from AFA president Tim Wildman, picked up by Free Malaysia Today, 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.”
