Corporate America Supporting Marriage Equality
Americans tend to become very emotional over hot-button social issues, but it’s money that really rules the roost. And corporate America is increasingly supporting full marriage equality and putting their money where their mouth is. Politico reports:
Gay marriage advocates have a new and powerful ally in corporate America.
One by one, national corporations like Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing and Google are wading into the once-risky business of taking a position supporting gay marriage in states across the country.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the lawsuit challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, which a federal appeals court called unconstitutional on Thursday. Forty-eight companies, including Nike, Time Warner Cable, Aetna, Exelon Corp., and Xerox had signed a brief arguing that the law negatively affected their businesses.
But the real test will come in November, when voters in four states — Maryland, Minnesota, Maine and Washington — will head to the polls. To date, gay marriage advocates have yet to win a statewide ballot initiative but hope corporate support and money will help turn the tide.
Last year, 25 executives including the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Viacom and Alcoa lobbied New York legislators to approve same-sex marriage.
In January, Microsoft, Boeing, Vulcan and RealNetworks were among those who voiced their support for a bill approving gay marriage in Washington state.
The fact is that corporate America has long been ahead of the curve on equality, changing far faster than governments have. That’s why so many of them get high scores on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index.
Michael Heath:
June 8th, 2012 at 9:26 am
Ed writes:
I’m not sure that’s true when it comes to blacks and women when we compare corporate America to the federal government as an employer. As a defender of business in this forum it pains me to point this out, but even recent studies reveal systemic discrimination against blacks in terms of hiring and women when it comes to equal pay for equal work (though I think the numbers on women’s pay is over-inflated). Where my context is the far more liberal tech industry; I bet it’s far worse in industries with more primitive thinking.
The following is not a rebuttal to Ed’s point . . .
I remember being interviewed when I was a senior in college by Conoco in Houston, this would have been late-1988/early-1989. The VP interviewing me made it clear he was a Christian and a Southern Baptist at that. He then asked me “where my people came from” and what was my faith. I don’t recall what I mumbled back, shocked by the question given that I came from a very red part of Michigan which had already progressed beyond such absurd job interview questions. He made a convincing argument with that alone I was not cut out for the oil industry (I received an offer but instead selected Apple Computer).
Didaktylos:
June 8th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Corporations are nothing if not pragmatic. When something becomes too powerful to defeat, they will make a deal with it.
Scott F:
June 8th, 2012 at 10:25 am
@1: Oh, that Michael Heath! I joined Apple myself in 1990, in the Developer Tools department.
Scott F:
June 8th, 2012 at 10:28 am
This may be cynical, but it doesn’t sound so much that the corporations are interested in hiring and promoting minorities. Rather, they are interested in increasing the number of customers that they can sell to.
cptdoom:
June 8th, 2012 at 10:49 am
I have a feeling that this has a lot to do with the demographics of support for marriage equality. Younger voters, and therefore younger consumers, are very much in favor of marriage equality, and those who are opposed tend to be less rabid than their elders. Younger consumers are the demographic for which most companies vie, so it makes sense in their marketing to take this step.
Not technically true. The original Arizona anti-gay hate amendment was voted down because it also outlawed civil unions, and Washington state was the first to affirm any kind of legal arrangement for LGBT couples when it voted in favor of the state’s domestic partnership law.
Michael Heath:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:30 am
cptdoom writes:
I don’t see the customer angle as a primary motivation but instead a secondary benefit. I instead think it has more to do with the tech industry becoming the biggest sector of the U.S. economy back in the 1980s. Where that industry has a far more progressive mindset in general, not just on social topics but in critical thinking and a willingness, nay an appetite to evolve by creating a culture of continuous improvement (constant change). They’ve become effective leaders for private industry when it comes to management in general so they’ve had a big influence on management culture with some exceptions (coal industry).
I worked for a subcontractor back in the 1990s who serviced mostly the tech industry but also other industries like the auto, appliance, consumer & industrial electronics, and utility sectors. The culture in all those sectors besides the auto industry was primitive compared to the tech industry like Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco (along with their primary vendors). The auto industry understood by the mid-1990s they had to evolve where their top mgt. was very committed to doing so they were ahead of the curve on most other industries in following the tech sectors new style of management.
Part of why the tech industry evolved so quickly wasn’t merely due to the opportunities to make money through innovation, but also because of how young their managers were and where they located, which was in mostly liberal-friendly enclaves. Tech often thinks more in terms of what’s cool than they do in terms of cost or traditional, even to the point of irrationality at times. It also helped that the tech workforce is also very diverse in terms of the country of origin and the need to quickly globalize to compete.
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June 10th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
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