Microsoft and Gay Rights

From Salon.com:

Maybe Microsoft isn't the Great Satan that it once was -- in the public imagination, Wal-Mart has pretty much overtaken that role -- but there are still plenty of folks who hold a special place in the darkest corners of their hearts for the world's largest software company.

According to The Stranger, an alternative weekly from Seattle, there's a whole new reason to dislike Microsoft: The company, the paper says, withdrew its support from legislation in the state of Washington that would have outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill was defeated in the Washington Senate this afternoon, 25-24.

According to The Stranger, Microsoft withdrew its support for the bill after the leader of a mega-church from Redmond threatened a boycott of Microsoft's products. Earlier this month, the paper says, a Microsoft senior vice president told a group of gay and lesbian employees about the threatened boycott -- and explained that Microsoft would henceforth be "neutral" on a bill it had previously supported. War Room contacted Microsoft for a response this morning; while a member of Microsoft's "rapid response" PR team promised us we'd be hearing from a Microsoft spokeswoman promptly, we're still waiting.

Although Microsoft is generally considered a gay-friendly employer, news that it may have waffled on the anti-discrimination measure -- especially in the face of a single threat from an NFL linebacker-turned-evangelical-minister -- has gay-rights activists none too happy with the company. "Apparently, Microsoft's new motto is 'your potential, our passion, as long as you're not gay or lesbian,'" Dan Kully, a spokesman for Equal Rights Washington, told us this afternooon. Earlier today, John Aravosis of AMERICAblog suggested in an open letter to Microsoft that advocates of gay rights in Washington could retaliate against the company by organizing concentrated local opposition to its plan to expand its Redmond campus.

"You may have thought 'Hell, the evangelicals boycott us, the gays boycott us -- we've got to choose one, and the evangelicals are in power, so let's screw the gays,'" Aravosis wrote. "But here's something you didn't count on. You messed with the wrong faggots." Aravosis wrote those words just as the story of Microsoft's position on the bill was first making the rounds on the internet -- and before the state senate had rejected the bill by a single vote. If Microsoft was beginning to feel the pain then, we can only imagine what life is like in Redmond right now.

-- Tim Grieve

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Wow... I live in Seattle, live up the road from Microsoft, and hadn't heard this. Thanks!

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This is starting to pick up steam here. After so many years of being so progressive, they're saying something to the effect that they didn't want to alienate their christian employees by supporting the bill. That's bullS@%T. They're bowing to the pressure of a local pastor, and indirectly saying they're ok with the discrimations of gays and lesbians in the workplace here in Washington state.

Time to get something started...

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We need a Larry Kramer for the 21st Century...somebody that's gonna kick, scream, make a scene, organize and shame the general public.

Why aren't more people up in arms about this?

This is a pretty big deal. It might be WA state, but that's now. This could influence what happens in other states. Microsoft has set a terrible example.

And believe me, I am not one to just bad-mouth MS for whatever reason. I've long been on "their side". I benefited from their domestic partner laws, wonderful insurance. Hell, they're the reason I live in Seattle. That's why I'm taking this stance of theirs so personally.

I am glad I no longer use explorer (use firefox), media player (use iTunes now), and switched from hotmail to google. Little things, I know. But it's a start. And whenever possible, will not use their products.

This is one time that instead of just ranting on a board, we can actually do something, even small things, about it.

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Perspective Larry Kramers keep being told to shut up--by those against gays and lesbians and by gays and lesbians.

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The man dubbed "The Right Hand of God" has fingerprints all over Microsoft. Still.

Ralph Reed is more than a Friend of Bill -- he is a paid GOP consultant, getting $20,000 a month from Microsoft to help shape the software behemoth's image in the global marketplace.

Judging from Reed's past -- he was the former head of the evangelical Christian Coalition -- that means serving up vitriolic viewpoints about gays and lesbians.

Judging from Microsoft's actions -- the company just yanked its support of a legislative bill in Olympia to protect gays -- the Reed brand of insight is shining through.

Microsoft yesterday confirmed its ongoing relationship with Reed, who raised eyebrows five years ago when he turned up on Microsoft's payroll. At the time, Reed was a hired gun. His charge was to influence future President George W. Bush to support Microsoft in its antitrust battle with the Justice Department.

Some observers figured Microsoft would wipe its hands clean of Reed back then. That didn't happen.

Financial documents posted this week to a Web log show Reed's relationship is far cozier than I imagined when I hinted at his red-state influence on Microsoft on Monday.

Microsoft has been paying Reed's company, Century Strategies, the $20,000 monthly fee since at least November, according to the blog, though Microsoft officials yesterday described the relationship as going back "several years."

Century Strategies, which has offices in Georgia and Washington, D.C., is being paid for expertise "on international trade and competition issues," Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray told me yesterday. "Century Strategies has never advised Microsoft on any social policy issues, including the anti-discrimination legislation."

Murray, who confirmed the accuracy of the information posted on the Americablog Web site, adds, "We do work with a number of consultants, Republicans and Democrats."

This much is true. Microsoft, though, fails to see the bigger picture. What is most troubling here is Reed's bedside relationship with Microsoft around the same time the company backtracked suddenly from gay rights legislation it had embraced just a year ago.

From the outside, it appears Microsoft was influenced by Reed -- a man who has President Bush's ear, has a following of millions of conservative Christians who think homosexuality is a sin, and who pushes the evangelical agenda every chance he gets.

Microsoft may not have hired Reed for his social views, but once he gets in the door it's a full-on Holy Roller revival.

Pastor Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church on the Eastside shares Reed's mind-set. As The Stranger first reported last week, the minister turned up the heat on Microsoft, which is progressive about gay rights in its workplace. Hutcherson wanted Microsoft to back away from its support of the bill and earlier this year had the audacity to ask the company to take a public stand against gay rights.

The bill died last week.

Microsoft took a neutral position, though the company says it arrived at its decision about the bill in December -- before Hutcherson knocked on the door. The minister says he is the one who moved Microsoft, threatening a boycott.

But even before Hutcherson raised a fuss, Reed was doling out compassionate conservative consulting to Microsoft.

Microsoft's backpedaling has the mark of fundamentalist zealotry and Century Strategies stamped all over it. The consulting company has a reputation for rounding up Christian opposition to dish out a right-wing force-feeding.

And Microsoft swallowed.

Does this make the Redmond-based company a symbol of corporate evil? No.

It does show how Microsoft allowed itself to be manhandled by outside forces and become misguided.

Bill Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer say they personally support gay rights. Both of them are now going through the kind of introspection that makes Hamlet look stoic. Microsoft's struggle -- to be socially progressive or not to be -- raises philosophical questions that would cause angst for any company, much less an industry leader.

Should a company reflect the views of its CEO or its corporate board? Or is a company ultimately responsible to shareholders and the bottom line?

When should a company get involved in politics? Must a company's public position match its internal policies? What does a company do when some employees embrace issues such as gay rights while others do not?

Where does all of this fit in with a company's responsibility to be a good corporate citizen?

Arriving at the answers is a doozy -- and Microsoft deserves some credit for now doing soul searching.

This is also true: When Microsoft faced the question of the gay rights bill it let the right hand of God draw the line in the sand in the wrong place.

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr.

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It's interesting how many people think "oh well, there's nothing I can do", and continue to do nothing. It's the little things that can make a difference.

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From Salon.com:

The Stranger, the Seattle weekly that broke the story of Microsoft's flip-flop on a gay rights measure, is out with a follow-up that seems to put the lie to Microsoft's spin on its change of heart.

When we talked with Microsoft spokeswoman Tami Begasse last week, she dismissed the notion that Microsoft had caved in to threats from an evangelical minister named Ken Hutcherson by claiming that Microsoft had decided to abandon a Washington state anti-discrimination bill before company officials ever met with Hutcherson.

In the new report from The Stranger, Hutcherson tells a different story. He says he met with Microsoft General Counsel Bradford Smith on Feb. 23 to complain that two Microsoft employees had testified in favor of the gay rights bill. At that meeting, Hutcherson says, Smith told him that Microsoft was supporting the anti-discrimination bill then pending in the Washington legislature as a "civil rights issue." That characterization stuck in the mind of Hutcherson, an African-American man who played professional football before becoming the minister of a Redmond, Wash., mega-church.

Hutcherson says he told Smith that he'd organize a national boycott of Microsoft's products if the company didn't change its position. Hutcherson says he told Smith: "You’re not going to like me in your world. I am going to give you something to fear Christians about." Hutcherson met with Smith a second time in March, he says, and at that point Smith said that Microsoft had decided to change its position on the bill.

Smith tells The Stranger that it didn't happen that way. He says that he told Hutcherson at their first meeting that Microsoft "hadn't taken a position on the bill." That doesn't square with Microsoft's admission that it had, in fact, taken a position on the bill before -- it supported it in the prior legislative session. Further, as AMERICAblog's John Aravosis points out, Smith's version of the story is hard to reconcile with statements from a Washington state legislator who sponsored the bill and members of a gay and lesbian Microsoft employees group. They all say that they heard about Microsoft's flip-flop on the bill only after Smith's second meeting with Hutcherson, and that when Smith told them about the change he discussed it as if it was recent news -- and not as some allocation of lobbying resources made much earlier, as Microsoft and Smith have claimed.

Now the world's largest software maker finds itself caught in the middle. Gay rights groups are outraged that a company they considered an ally has abandoned them, and Hutcherson is angry with the company for not giving him the credit he deserves for causing the switch. "The company lied, and 'the Black Man' is not going to lie down and say 'OK,'" Hutcherson tells The Stranger. "Evidently, they don’t know that I won’t keep my mouth shut about unrighteousness."

-- Tim Grieve

[09:18 EDT, April 28, 2005]

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Good one, PJ.

"Evidently, they don’t know that I won’t keep my mouth shut about unrighteousness."

That's the thing, they are outspoken and take action. What are WE doing?

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You know what's funny (and what relates) is that anti-gay Christians (in trying to paint gays and lesbians as anything BUT victims) go on and on about how wealthy gays and lesbians are.

And, they are right. We are more likely to afford to buy computers. So, why is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot?

It's funny. People in this country actually believe that the religious right is all powerful right now. Not only are they not truly--their reign of terror is about to crash and burn.

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Coors does? Well he didn't when he ran for office in Nov with an anti-gay platform.

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A corporation is an "amoral" entity, whose sole purpose is to create profit and enrich its shareholders. To expect a Corporation to take a "moral" stand is foolish, and is to disregard the fundamentals of capitalism. To the extent that a coporation's leadership determines that taking a political position is good for its profits, they may choose to do so. Microsoft does not support workplace diversity because it is the morally "right" thing to do, but rather as a tool to attract and keep the best quality employees; that increases their profit.

If Microsoft's research showed that the path to the greatest profits lay in keyboards lined with seal-pup fur, they would become the world's largest consumer of dead baby seals.

If we can demonstrate that an actively pro-gay position is the path to the highest profits, they will act accordingly.

It's an interesting opportunity for us to evaluate how strongly MS values the gay market segment; will there be a significant placating gesture to us or just Steve Ballmer's 2,000 word email that said nothing? Of course, it has a lot to do with how much noise we make and how long we can keep the story on the front page.

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