Gay-Friendly Companies

The Worldnutdaily has an article up amusingly titled America's Pro-Homosexual Giants. No, it's not about a bunch of huge men in leather leading a pride parade. It's a list of all the companies who scored 100% on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. Of course, the WND thinks these are horrible companies out to destroy "family values", but what would you expect from that pack of dullards?

The great news is that there is a major trend toward companies being more open and supportive of gay employees. They are scored on such things as whether they offer health benefits for the partners of gay employees and whether they have anti-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation. The good news is that while in 2002 only 13 companies scored a perfect score, this year 101 companies did so. And that includes many of the largest and most prominent companies in the world, including AT&T, IBM, Kraft, Chrysler and Ford, Xerox and many more.

Naturally, the Worldnutdaily finds all of this appalling. They accuse some companies of "proudly flaunting" their pro-gay policies. But what I find great about it all is that these people claim to be for free markets, and it is the free market that has encouraged this trend. Companies have learned that in a competitive labor market, if you want to attract and retain the best employees, you have to provide the protections and benefits that put you high on this list. These companies weren't forced to do this by government mandate, they did it because it makes good business sense.

Update: Just to show you the mentality of Worldnutdaily readers, here are the results of their poll asking them for their opinion on gay-friendly companies. 41.9% said "I personally will do my best to boycott the companies that are pro-homosexual." 10.2% of those people apparently are too stupid to recognize hypocrisy, since they agreed that "It's extortion, as firms would otherwise face boycotts, intimidation." And 26.5% say "I'm outraged and disgusted companies would go out of their way for special homosexual benefits." Apparently these halfwits think that not being fired from your job for something entirely unrelated to your performance of that job is a "special" benefit available only to homosexuals. And apparently, offering health benefits to an employee's partner is a "special" benefit - unless of course it's a married straight partner. In fact, it appears that a sizable portion of these people think that by extending the "special" benefit of health insurance to those other than married straight couples, their benefit is less "special" and therefore the new, broader benefit is "special". Clearly, logic is not the strong suit of Worldnutdaily readers.

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If WorldNutDaily's proposed boycott works as well as the Southern Baptist Convention's proposed boycott a few years ago of Disney because of "Gay Days" at Disney World in Orlando, the companies should be ecstatic. In the few years after the SBC announced their boycott, attendance at Disney World rose and its stock price rose.

NB: Gay Days is not organized by Disney; it is a separate operation. A Disney representative responded to the boycott with something to the effect that they will sell tickets to anyone who will pay.

You wrote: "Apparently these halfwits think that not being fired from your job for something entirely unrelated to your performance of that job is a "special" benefit available only to homosexuals"

Actually, it is a special benefit awarded only to certain groups, who have historically been discriminated against. You could fire an employee if he/she does not agree with your political views, regardless of his/her job performance. You cannot fire an employee solely because of his/her gender, race, sexual orientation, disability status.

By Anonymous (not verified) on 22 Sep 2005 #permalink

Anonymous wrote:

You could fire an employee if he/she does not agree with your political views, regardless of his/her job performance. You cannot fire an employee solely because of his/her gender, race, sexual orientation, disability status.

Sexual orientation is not in the Federal anti-discrimination statutes. It might be in a few state anti-discrimination laws. But beyond that, it is not illegal to fire someone for being gay. The courts have come close to naming gays as an historically oppressed group (which they clearly are) but haven't gone all the way. To do so would trigger heightened review by the court when looking at laws that negatively impact gays.

Ed Brayton at September 22, 2005 10:58 AM

Sexual orientation is not in the Federal anti-discrimination statutes. It might be in a few state anti-discrimination laws. But beyond that, it is not illegal to fire someone for being gay.

This last is true in most areas of the US.

The way I put it fairly bluntly is that in most areas it is perfectly legal for a conservative christian to fire (or not hire) a gay person because he is gay, but it is illegal for a gay person to fire (or not hire) a conservative christian because he is a conservative christian. That is "special rights" for conservative christians.

I'm sure that you understand the "special rights" reference. The point being that conservative christians love their special rights.

Good lord, they even find gay themes in Popeye. This on the heels of Shark's Tale and the Teletubbies and Spongebog Squarepants. These people are just plain looney.

As a friend of mine once said that nothing is innocent anymore. To me, commerical was a cute take on Bluto and Popeye's rivalry. Olive is one of the major causes for them being at eachother's throats so now that they're good friends, they realize that she's maybe not worth losing this new friendship. Idiots like that are so obsessed with gays that they homosexuals behind every tree.

Besides, I refuse to take morality lessons from a bunch of people who pimp a movie that contains overly long and gratuitous torture sequences (Passion of the Christ), find nothing wrong with a book that glorifies mass genocide (the Bible), and bullys gays just because they can't hate Black people anymore.