Southwest Airlines Official Airline of National LGBT Conference

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has announced that Southwest Airlines is the official airline of its National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change January 25 – 29, 2012 in Baltimore, Maryland. The low-cost carrier is the largest airline in the U.S.

“We believe that Southwest’s open embrace of a radical political agenda — an agenda that identifies itself by its sexual proclivities — undermines essential societal institutions, particularly, the natural family,” said David E. Smith, Executive Director of Illinois Family Institute (IFI). “By its action, Southwest Airlines violates the deeply held convictions of many of its customers. Through both funding and corporate policies, Southwest Airlines affirms and supports radical and culturally divisive anti-family principles.”

The Dallas-based airline operates more than 3,400 flights a day with 236 of those flights departing from Chicago, making the Windy City its top city served.

“At Southwest Airlines, we take pride in our outreach and commitment to the GLBT community,” the airline’s web site states. “We have community partnerships with a variety of local and national organizations who are dedicated to GLBT causes and initiatives.”

Interested participants are directed to www.southwestairlines.com/gaytravel. Here the company shares its support for the gay and lesbian community.

While IFI believes that those who self-identify as homosexual have a right to live and work in their communities free from harassment and are equal in dignity and worth to heterosexuals, this family advocacy group has great concern with the airline’s stated activism.

“IFI expects that Southwest Airlines, as a business enterprise, would refrain from taking positions on arguable, divisive cultural issues,” said Smith. “The solution should be obvious: conduct business and leave the transformation of public sentiments on controversial moral issues to others.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email to Southwest’s leadership: CEO Gary Kelly, CFO Laura Wright and COO Mike VandeVen to complain about its sponsorship and promotion of an organization that advances an immoral political agenda.