Corporate America’s Gay-Rights Conversion

In the wake of the GOP debacle on Arizona's SB 1062 - a/k/a, the turn the gays away bill - one of the most interesting developments was the obvious miscalculation on the part of the Republican political whores who prostituted themselves to the Christofascists and "family values" crowd as to how corporate America would react, and react it did.  At least 83 major corporations and numerous chambers of commerce all read the GOP the riot act and threatened dire consequences if the bill was signed into law.  Even the homophobic NFL found the bill so distastefully that, as Sports Illustrated reports, investigations were set in motion on what needed to be done to move the Super Bowl out of Arizona.  I believe that increasingly the GOP is going to find itself having to decide whether it will (i)  prostitute itself to the Christofascists and alienate corporate America, or (ii) kick the Christofascist to the curb where they belong.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the conversion of corporate America on the issue of gay rights.  Here are highlights:

[T]he defeat of the bill [SB 1062] in Arizona also revealed an evolution of sorts for Corporate America. 

Companies lined up against the legislation, with major corporations including American Airlines, Apple and Intel announcing their opposition. The NFL said it was following the situation closely, raising questions of whether it might pull the 2015 Super Bowl in Arizona if the bill became law. And dozens of local and national companies signed a letter to Gov. Brewer or made their own statements of opposition, citing the damage it would do to the local economy, their ability to seek the most talented workers, and tourism in the state. 

"If passed into law, these proposals would cause significant harm to many people and will result in job losses," read part of a statement from Delta Air Lines. "They would also violate Delta's core values of mutual respect and dignity."

While such economic arguments coming from business leaders may not be much of a surprise, their vocal and highly public role in the debate still represents a big shift — and a welcome one — from just a few years ago. For years, business leaders have eschewed social issues, grasping onto neutral stances to avoid criticism from shareholders or customer groups. 

 "What's changed even in the last five years is that business has gone from implementing policies aimed at their own employees to turning around and weighing in forcefully on public policy beyond the four walls of their business," says Deena Fidas, the director of the workplace equality program at Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group for gay rights. "They've become legislative and social change agents." 

For instance, says Fidas, fewer than five businesses publicly came forward as supporters of same-sex marriage rights when Proposition 8, a ballot measure which would ban gay marriage in California, was up for a vote back in 2008. Yet last year, hundreds of large corporations signed a brief in favor of overturning the Defense of Marriage Act.

Obviously, the change in Corporate America mirrors the rapidly evolving shift in Americans' attitudes toward gay rights. Business leaders don't want to appear out of touch with their customers, a majority of whom now support same-sex marriage. And as a growing number of state judges strike down bans on gay marriage — including one in Texas on Wednesday — many companies surely sense that staying mum on gay-rights issues would not only hit their bottom lines, but would put them on the wrong side of history.

"Corporate support is no longer a coastal phenomenon," she says. "We're seeing heartland and manufacturing companies making the case for business equality" far more often than they did five years ago.

In Indiana, for instance, Eli Lilly and Cummins made donations of $100,000 each to a campaign supporting the constitutionality of same-sex unions. In an interview with Bloomberg last month, Eli Lilly's senior director of corporate responsibility, Robert Smith, said "it was important for us to lead. If we didn’t do it, who would?”

That question, ultimately, is the right one. Corporate leaders may have self-interested reasons for promoting gay rights. But as we saw in Arizona, they are also in a unique position to create bridges between political parties and to be voices not only for the rights of their own employees and customers, but for everyone.

While not noted in the article, it is also likely that corporate leaders are coming to see the far right's "family values" organizations for what they always have been: religious extremists and white supremacists who are anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Hispanic and anti-social progress.  These "godly Christians" are not nice folks and they belong outside of the political and social mainstream.