VICTORY! NO LILITH FAIR MONEY TO CPCs!

Success!

Lilith fair is back this year for the first time since 1999 but not without controversy. The touring festival will donate $1 for every ticket sold to a charity involved in women’s issues. By becoming a Facebook fan of the Lilith Fair, you can vote for the charity in your area. In some cities, among possible charities you could vote for are a pro-life group home for young mothers in Seattle and crisis pregnancy centers in Indianapolis and Minneapolis. But, luckily, a facebook campaign opposing the festival funding anti-choice groups got some these charities removed from the voting processs! But why were these charities even on the ballot in the first place?

The Lilith Fair has, after all, historically supported pro-choice groups. As The Chicago Reader reminds us, the 1997 incarnation of the festival threatened a boycott against a concert pavilion near Houston, Texas if they didn’t allow Planned Parenthood to set up a booth.

The inclusion of these anti-choice organizations, according to the CEO of the company putting on the tour and its co-founder, is really a matter of a lazy google search process for women’s charities in each city, and not some anti-feminist conspiracy. Whoops!

The festival seems to have dug itself a hole by inadvertently included anti-choice organizations, and now they have to appease, at least to an extent, the anti-choicers as well:

The festival announced today that the Crisis Pregnancy centers have been dropped from the ballot! But, NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina was dropped as well. What’s staying on the ballot, however, are a number of maternity homes, some of whom are grounded in very anti-choice philosophies.

Next time, Lilith Fair, spend more than 5 seconds on google!