Amazon Joins Marriage Equality Supporters - Meanwhile NOM Attacks Starbucks

I guess "better late than never" is the way to describe Seattle, Washington based Amazon's somewhat belated announcement that it supports the marriage equality bills now before the Washington State legislature. Other Washington State based corporate giants came on board weeks ago. Still noticeably absent from the list of supportive corporations is Boeing. The Seattle Times has coverage on the development. Here are highlights:

Seattle-based Internet retailer Amazon.com said Wednesday it has joined other large Northwest companies to support legislation that would legalize gay marriage in Washington state.

Amazon's support comes as the state Senate prepares to vote on the measure, likely late afternoon or early evening Wednesday.

It also comes nearly two weeks after six prominent companies — Concur, Group Health Cooperative, Microsoft, Nike, RealNetworks, and Vulcan — publicly declared their support for gay-marriage legislation. Last week, Starbucks added its name to the list.

"Amazon is joining other Pacific Northwest companies, including Microsoft, Starbucks and Nike, in support of Washington state's marriage equality bills," Amazon said in a statement released by spokeswoman Mary Osako. "The spirit of these bills is consistent with our longstanding employment practices."

Meanwhile the Christofascists at the National Organization for Marriage are having hissy fits and spray spittle as they lash out at supportive corporations. Here's a sampling of the rant coming out of NOM's Brian Brown, a/k/a "Brian Brownshirt" to utilize Joe Jervis's apt nickname for Brown:

Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), sharply criticized Starbucks' decision to wade into the gay marriage fight in Washington State. That decision comes on top of an earlier decision by Starbucks to ask the Supreme Court to strike down the federal definition of marriage as one man and one woman as well.

NOM pledged an intensive public relations effort to ask Starbucks customers who favor retaining marriage as the union of husband and wife to complain to company headquarters.

Having waded into a social issue where Starbucks has no special competence, the company has an obligation to reassure its customers, vendors and employees that it will respect the most important diversity—diversity of opinion,"

The hypocrisy of NOM is striking. First, because NOM has ZERO competence to speak on social issues. It's sole argument rests on trying to force Christianist religious beliefs on everyone. Second, to NOM it's fine to speak out if one is a Christofascist extremist who wants to re-criminalize homosexuality and turn the nation into a quasi-theocracy, but God forbid if one doesn't subscribe to NOM's religious beliefs and bigotry. Combined with NOM's flouting of campaign finance laws,its continued deliberate use of debunked faux science, and the stream of outright lies disseminated by NOM, this new outburst by Brian Brownshirt is yet another strong argument of why the best move one can make is to walk away from Christianity - or at least NOM's perverted version of it.