WINTER PARK, Fla., Aug. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- A national campaign charging
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. with "anti-family promotion of pornography" was announced
today by The Timothy Plan, the nation's leading mutual fund group offering
funds that are based on moral responsibility.
    At issue is the refusal of Wal-Mart to either remove copies of
Cosmopolitan magazine from public display in high traffic areas in its stores
or "hood" the covers of the magazine, which Timothy Plan President Arthur Ally
describes as one of the "most blatantly aggressive soft core pornographic
magazines in America."
    "What is at risk here is Wal-Mart's professed reputation as a family-
oriented store," said Ally, who admits he feels like "David taking on
Goliath."
    Initial action by the Winter Park, Fla.-headquartered Timothy Plan
($135 million in assets) includes the divesting of 9,200 shares of Wal-Mart
stock held in the company's large mid-cap growth fund, followed by an
announcement of this action and their invitation to join them in a personal
boycott of Wal-Mart to a national network of 4,000 Christian financial
planners and to 10,000-plus Timothy Plan shareholders. In addition, Wal-Mart
has been added to the Timothy Plan's list of companies that are screened out
of their funds because of their involvement in pornography.
    The campaign is the outgrowth of Wal-Mart's refusal of four written
requests from Ally, asking for removal of pornographic magazines, such as
Cosmopolitan, from store checkout lanes. "My request was not that Wal-Mart
stop selling such magazines -- this is not about censorship -- but simply to
remove them from areas where every man, woman and child that goes through your
stores will have them staring them in the face."
    In his initial letter to Wal-Mart President Lee Scott, Ally said he and
his wife were shocked when they saw the display of Cosmopolitan magazine while
standing in the checkout line of their neighborhood Wal-Mart store. "We simply
could not believe our eyes," said Ally. "Up to that point, we were pleased to
invest in Wal-Mart stock and offer it to our clients because of your company's
reputation of being a family-friendly organization," Ally wrote to Scott.
    Ally's initial letter was one in a series of eight letters between Ally
and Wal-Mart representatives, including four various responses from Wal-Mart,
none of which came from the Wal-Mart president. The final response came from
Don S. Harris, Wal-Mart's  executive vice-president of general merchandise,
who wrote ... "it's our intention to continue merchandising magazines in the
same manner that we currently do."
    There is a parallel, Ally claims, in Wal-Mart's "profit-at-any-cost"
attitude regarding Cosmopolitan magazine and the subtle theme of declining
corporate moral and ethical values that seems to be creeping into big business
today. "I believe that most companies are run by people who want to do the
right thing, and I don't believe there is a widespread greed-begets-greed
feeding frenzy in corporate America, but there certainly seems to be a growing
lack of integrity -- moral and otherwise -- as borne out in recent corporate
scandals in some executive suites," said Ally.
    As for Wal-Mart, "there is a definite dichotomy in what Wal-Mart is doing
in this situation and what they say they are," Ally added. "Is there an agenda
there ... I don't know; but I do know that soft core pornography has this
country on a moral slippery slope. It's the initiation to hard core
pornography, child molestation, bestiality and worse."
    Ally said he found Wal-Mart's position on Cosmopolitan magazine
incongruous with its Web-site stated policies regarding its refusal to stock
music with parental guidance stickers and its restriction of the sale of
"mature-rated" video games to customers 17 years of age and older.
    In his initial letter to Scott, Ally challenged the chief executive to "go
into any of your stores, publicly introduce yourself as the president of Wal-
Mart, get on the speaker system and read aloud to your store's customers all
the words on the cover of any issue of Cosmopolitan magazine."
    Wal-Mart joins a select list of companies -- including Time Warner,
Abercrombie & Fitch and most entertainment company stocks -- that The Timothy
Plan funds screen out because of their involvement "in the moral decline of
our culture, through their involvement in abortion, pornography or active
promotion of the homosexual agenda." Out of a total of 8,000-plus publicly
traded stocks, The Timothy Plan has approximately 450 on their prohibitive
list.
    Ally said the battle with Wal-Mart will also involve soliciting the help
nationally from other ministries, and such organizations as the American
Family Association, Family Decency Association, Focus on the Family and
Concerned Women of America, representing millions of citizens concerned about
the moral decline of America.
    The Timothy Plan, launched officially in 1994 with a single mutual fund,
now has eight funds and offers total, broad-based asset-allocation investing.
Today, it is the largest pro-life, pro-family, Biblically based mutual fund
group, employing a specific moral screening criteria designed to avoid
investing shareholders' money in any company that has a pattern of
contributing to the moral degradation of society.

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