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You seem to think that it's impossible for people from a rich nation to be victims. This isn't the case.
49 people dead at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2017, shot for being in a gay club.
22 trangender people dead in 2016 due to fatal violence.
Black men are NINE TIMES more likely than other ethnicities to be murdered by police.
And the list goes on and on. So when someone rants about how social justice is evil, I say no; hate is evil, and oppression is evil. Equity means you'll need to accept people who are different than you. Part of improving equity means accepting that social justice interventions are imperfect now, and there's no easy answer. But if you argue that equity is not needed, it's you who will be judged by historians as the oppressor.

Riots tend to happen as a result of oppression. That's why the privileged (white) right generally does not erupt in rioting. And why the majority of the left does not either. But let's not act as if conservatives aren't violent:

Abortion clinic bombings, violence against sexual minorities, and transphobia come to mind as common manifestations of violence from the right. And that's to say nothing of the non-violent systems of oppression that many in the right are either fond of maintaining, or oblivious to.

I could never have voted for Hillary, if not for any other reason than because of her long standing opposition to gay marriage and her subsequent lies about it

Rich. . . so you voted for the ticket with MIKE PENCE!? and Donald Trump, who has been a consistent opponent of marriage equality. Face it, you were also duped. This IS Brexit all over. . . where AFTER the election voters are like, "what is the EU?".

It will be interesting to see how long people like you will defend him. Trump will eventually unite America. . . with his universal disappointment. . .

>The use of Federal hate crime legislation was the only way the
>stranglehold of White Supremacist Jim Crow laws were finally
>loosed in the former slave states,
Wow so Jim Crow Laws were a major problem until the mid 1990's, ( http://www.hrc.org/resources/h... ). And having been deep in the legislative process, I can say there never was a clause that says this applies only to former slave owning states (which would have been almost all of them). Who the hell modded this crap up.??
Now on the other hand civil rights legislation did have a major impact on jim crow laws, and most of the overt forms of oppression.......
It is the little nit picking things that make all the difference.
Remember Civil rights act brought to you by the same party that worked so hard to keep slavery as an institution..... Ahem abraham lincoln ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) a proud member of the republican party, now being represented by a potato chip, how the times have changed.

And the other day the Human Rights Campaign endorsed Clinton over Sanders for president even though Sanders has a far longer and better track record when it comes to support for gays and Clinton was even previously opposed to gay marriage for a good chunk of her political career.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows and it wouldn't surprise me if Elissa was another one of those feminists who has more in common with someone like Benny Hinn than they do with supporting the actual ideals of the movement. I've never heard of her before, so I have no idea what she believes in or supports as far as positions go, but it does stand out as strange. Then again, the overreaction related to Eich was pretty damned ridiculous to begin with, so it may be something anyone with half a brain could look past when there are bigger things at stake. So perhaps she's not one of those idiots more interested in grandstanding on platitudes or ideological purity and someone who'd prefer to get something with actual significance accomplished.

You mean in USA?

Meanwhile, while they can't exactly push through laws against being gay at home, though they still try, they shift their focus where they can create such laws.
See... it's not just a local thing. God hates gays EVERYWHERE!

As for bombing and killing indiscriminately and war... How many wars was it that US is fighting this week?
After being left that as legacy from a guy who was convinced that god himself wanted him to be the president and punish the "evildoers".

There are 1,138 benefits, rights and protections provided on the basis of marital status that single people do not have. Do you really want to live in a society that denies basic rights to people because they are not married?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

Was enacted, has since been struck down but only for technicalities: lack of quorum when passed. That is being appealed to Uganda Supreme Court, and if that fails it will be brought up again. Original bill included death penalty, was changed after International pressure to life sentence, but politicians have been working to amend to make homosexuality a capital crime as originally intended.

Either way, the legislation has also increased vigilante homophobia, Uganda gays "face an atmosphere of physical abuse, vandalism to their property, blackmail, death threats, and 'correctional rape'."

Bill was introduced following a two-day conference by U.S. Christians on how homosexuality is a threat to families in Africa.

American Family Association leader praises bill:

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmo...

Family Research Council supports Uganda anti-homosexuality bill:

http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/...

Hm, that rang a bell...

I also find inappropriate a similar recent evolvement within IEEE politics; in this case it relates to LGBT rights, see for yourself: http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/... To be sure, LGBT rights are important and it is good that laws protect them - and more could and should be done about it. The same applies for Human Rights, overall; no person in his secular humanist mind would ever object to that.

It is doubtful, though, that LGBT groups would ever add banners in their statutes in relation to engineers' rights and ethics, so it is questionable why the reverse should ever be true. There is really no point in adding pompous statements in relation to sex, sexual orientation, skin color, disabilities etc. Making such a list is itself a kind of discrimination (!), since you hand-pick which kind of discrimination is bad, as if similar non-professional conduct is any more tolerable. Sorry, that's not correct and, it's even not fair for those who really cherish a generic concept of citizenship and may get discriminated for a reason not declared in the list.

Please, guys from the US, let's keep the focus on what the original subject is and, avoid making professional bodies appear as vehicles for (valid) political ideals, which distract from the original cause and warrant conflicting agendas! And if somebody goes against constitutional mandates, the juries are there to put things in order.

SB 1062 does not legalize discrimination based on sexual preference (http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/51leg/2r/bills/sb1062p.pdf) because it already is legal to do so (https://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/lgbt-inclusive-public-accommodations-laws1). I am not saying such discrimination should be legal. Anyone saying otherwise, however, is either ignorant or perpetrating the political equivalent of a fraud.

Orientation is not currently included
IT'S BEING WORKED ON
http://www.hrc.org/laws-and-legislation/federal-legislation/employment-non-discrimination-act

ENDA was introduced in the 113th Congress in the House by Reps. Jared Polis (D-CO) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and in the Senate by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Mark Kirk (R-IL), as well as Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) on April 25, 2013. ENDA was approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on July 10, 2013, by a bipartisan vote of 15-7.

Brooks discovered that approximately equal percentages of liberals and conservatives give to private charitable causes. However, conservatives gave about 30 percent more money per year to private charitable causes, even though his study found liberal families earned an average of 6 percent more per year in income than did conservative families.

This is another one of those things I call a "true lie" - it is a shallow literal truth that is used to obscure a more meaningful truth.

It is literally true that conservatives give more to charity than liberals. But it is a lie to say that means conservatives are more charitable. That is because the entire difference in charitable giving is accounted for by religious donations. When you take those out of the equation, both groups give roughly the same amount of money.

When religious giving isn't counted, the geography of giving is very different. Some states in the Northeast would jump into the top 10 when secular gifts alone are counted. New York would vault from No. 18 to No. 2 in the rankings, and Pennsylvania would climb from No. 40 to No. 4.

--The Chronical of Philanthropy

The problem with religious charity, aka tithing, is that it is not truly charitable. It is about giving money to something that benefits the giver whereas true charity is altruistic with no expectation of benefit to the giver. Religious donations are charity as defined by the IRS but are not charity as defined by common usage of the term.

In extreme cases the money can be "laundered" such that it counts as an IRS charitable deduction but then is used for something that is not deductible. One such example is the way the Knights of Columbus -- a religious charity affiliated with the catholic church -- spent $1.9M between 2008 and 2009 to fight same-sex marriage laws in Washington State. If a secular person wanted to donate money to a group like the Human Rights Campaign who advocate for gay marraige, it would not be considered charity.

Same thing with the way Mormons are expected to pay a 10% tithe to the Mormon Church. But the Church turned around and spent $22 million of that to defeat the pro-gay-marraige Prop 8 in california.

I don't believe for a second that they've had a sudden change of heart in the direction of equality and fairness. More likely, legal and PR informed the decision makers that they were about to be on the losing end of some pretty hefty legal action and bad press.

And you base this on what? Microsoft's historical poor treatment of the GLBT community? Oh, right, they're on the Human Rights Campaign's Best Places to Work list.

Just because Microsoft does some legally, socially, and ethically questionable things doesn't mean that everything they do is questionable. Given that MS has been a leader in supporting GLBT rights within their own workplace, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they just screwed this one up, and want to make it right.

The HRC maintains a list of gay-friendly employers in the US.

The results are surprisingly heartening, and have been getting better every year. Microsoft have had a 100% rating for 4 years.

(If you care about these things, you might want to avoid Wal-Mart and Exxon. Their scores are fairly embarrassing)

Pick a side and stick with it will you? Originally you said:

> This law prevents Google from giving same sex partners benefits for the same price. Insuring two unmarried people is far more expensive than two married people.

Only to respond to my argument with:

> Unless you can provide supporting documentation, I stand firm by the position that no matter how much clout or negotiating power you have, the same amount of clout results in a lower price to insure a married couple than to insure two "unrelated" people, as is the case for "normal" insurance rates.

This article is about Google, not smaller third companies. Pick one, not both.

Re: Supporting documentation... it's interesting that you expect me to prove the cost savings of bulk purchasing power, something that is well known not only in the insurance industry but in the economy as a whole. Instead... I suggest you do your own research into what major companies offer for same sex domestic partners... such as Microsoft and Google.

Pick a side and stick with it will you? Originally you said:

> This law prevents Google from giving same sex partners benefits for the same price. Insuring two unmarried people is far more expensive than two married people.

Only to respond to my argument with:

> Unless you can provide supporting documentation, I stand firm by the position that no matter how much clout or negotiating power you have, the same amount of clout results in a lower price to insure a married couple than to insure two "unrelated" people, as is the case for "normal" insurance rates.

This article is about Google, not smaller third companies. Pick one, not both.

Re: Supporting documentation... it's interesting that you expect me to prove the cost savings of bulk purchasing power, something that is well known not only in the insurance industry but in the economy as a whole. Instead... I suggest you do your own research into what major companies offer for same sex domestic partners... such as Microsoft and Google.

My feeling is that this situation is changing rapidly.

Personally, I have a blog that would reveal to even the most casual observer that I'm gay. I have photos of Pride and other gay-oriented events posted on flickr, carrying tags like "gay" and "GLBT". It was very much a conscious decision that I made when I first started blogging and posting photos. I figure if anyone is going to hold any of this against me, I want nothing to do with them in real life, anyway. When it comes to employment, the most cited concern, I've already decided that I won't work for a company that scores less than 100 on the HRC Corporate Equality Index. Any company that doesn't fully embrace its GLBT employees isn't worth my time or effort.

I'm almost 30. These days, more and more queer kids are growing up without ever experiencing the closet. I suspect this is partly a result of the myspace culture, but no doubt it's also related to the growth of gay-straight alliances and non-discriminatory sex education in schools.

Of course, this is just one gay geek's perspective, from arguably the most queer-friendly city in North America. I realize that it's not like this everywhere, but it's only getting better, and the 'net is leading the change.

Speaking as a homosexual, it has more to do with spousal rights (right to visit your spouse in the hospital, getting on your spouses health insurance if you have none/job does not offer any/job has insurance that sucks and/or is more expensive than your spouses, right to say what happens upon death, etc)...

Right now we have no control over any of this unless whatever state we are in specifically grants such rights outside of marriage.

We want to be treated equally. We don't want any "extra' benefits that heterosexual people wouldn't have. Hell, if the religious don't want us having "religious" marriage, I (and many others) would be perfectly happy with a state official conducting the ceremony.

There is no "agenda" here, despite what the religious right-wingers would have you belive.

I'm sure the issue is a bit more indepth than I've stated here, but you could look at hrc.org to read up on it.

Motto - don't trust MS, use their track record as an example.

I know you're actually trolling, but to those who care about other great companies for gay and lesbian employees, here's a good link:

http://www.businessreform.com/article.php?articleI D=11076&ofid=2&ruser=yes

The Advocate also publishes a list of the top ten companies to work for every year. Here's the list for 2000 (The 2004 list doesn't seem to be archived on their site):

http://web.archive.org/web/20040215174655/http://w ww.advocate.com/html/stories/823/823_topten.asp

The HRC (The Human Rights Campaign) also maintains such a list, the annual State of the Workplace:

http://www.hrc.org/Content/ContentGroups/Publicati ons1/State_of_the_Workplace/SOTW_03.pdf

and the Corporate Equality Index:

http://www.hrc.org/Content/ContentGroups/Publicati ons1/Corporate_Equality_Index2/2004CEIReport.pdf

If you don't like the subject matter, don't read further into it, but some people around here might actually be interested.

I know you're actually trolling, but to those who care about other great companies for gay and lesbian employees, here's a good link:

http://www.businessreform.com/article.php?articleI D=11076&ofid=2&ruser=yes

The Advocate also publishes a list of the top ten companies to work for every year. Here's the list for 2000 (The 2004 list doesn't seem to be archived on their site):

http://web.archive.org/web/20040215174655/http://w ww.advocate.com/html/stories/823/823_topten.asp

The HRC (The Human Rights Campaign) also maintains such a list, the annual State of the Workplace:

http://www.hrc.org/Content/ContentGroups/Publicati ons1/State_of_the_Workplace/SOTW_03.pdf

and the Corporate Equality Index:

http://www.hrc.org/Content/ContentGroups/Publicati ons1/Corporate_Equality_Index2/2004CEIReport.pdf

If you don't like the subject matter, don't read further into it, but some people around here might actually be interested.

As a gay man in the I.T industry, I find this news particularly disturbing. The very fact Microsoft is now retracting it's stance on GLBT rights because of some schizo jesus freak is ludicrious! That's like telling your boss to eat shit and die, expecting to come out of it still gainfully employed. Doesn't work that way. This industry is actually very accepting of gays and lesbians. IBM, SGI, RedHat, Sun, Oracle all provide same-sex benefits and have employee support systems in place for their GLBT employees. In fact, IBM is the #1 supplier of personal computers to GLBT businesses and actively supports the Human Rights Campaign. Apple is another mover and shaker in GLBT rights and was one of the first to provide same-sex benefits (Apple is just a mover and shaker period). To really find out what the the feeling is of the industry, check out the http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Search_the _Database&Template=/CustomSource/WorkNet/srch.cfm& searchtypeid=1&searchSubTypeID=1HRC's equality score card . Microsoft will come ot looking like bigoted fools in this.

Some would argue that marriage is designed solely for procreation, and includes certain incentives to facilitate that. Personally, I don't see marriage as having anything to do with love (certainly love can exist outside marriage); why do people need the state to acknowledge their love for each other?


Read This

Maybe you should actually do some fact checking before you make up your mind about something based on 'What other people think or have told you to think'.

Even if you still disagree, at least you won't be arguing a point just from ignorance.

Among some of the sites this U.S. agency accidentally blocks ... several gay rights websites.

The submitter obviously is not familiar with the Bush Administration's stance towards anyone who is not hetereosexual. Anything that happens towards us these days that is negative, do not believe for a moment it was just an "accident".

If you're not convinced, check out The Human Rights Campaign website.

I made a lot of money in 2003. I used it to buy just about anything I wanted and had time/space for; the same holds true for material desires down the road. Christmas drives me nuts, because it means that my friends and family will be wasting money buying me more stuff that will likely end up in a closet or at the salvation army. My only really memorable gift from xmas 2002 was a Barnes&Noble gift card, and I still haven't had time to read the damned books I bought with it!

So how about everyone just does me a favor and gives the money away? Following are my favourite charities:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Human Rights Campaign

The Sierra Club

Amnesty International

Greenpeace

I'm sure, in fact I know, that I have left a lot of worth organizations out. But seriously, my christmas wish is that people would stop wasting money buying cheap asian trinkets and spend it on something useful. Christmas doesn't have to be a load of crap. Make it worthwhile.

Unless, of course, you want to get me gift certificates at the Apple store.

My personal reaction is that the notion of civil union is distinctly insulting, it reeks of an attempt to appease homosexuals while maintaining a "seperate but equal" policy. If the purpose of marriage is solely to produce children, then why are childless heterosexual couples still allowed to be married? And what about those heterosexual couples who aren't able to conceive? I think it would only be fair in those cases to nullify those marriages and replace them with civil unions. But that's just me. If you're curious about what gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgendered people expect from marriage, PFLAG has some information. The Human Rights Campaign also has more information.

My personal reaction is that the notion of civil union is distinctly insulting, it reeks of an attempt to appease homosexuals while maintaining a "seperate but equal" policy. If the purpose of marriage is solely to produce children, then why are childless heterosexual couples still allowed to be married? And what about those heterosexual couples who aren't able to conceive? I think it would only be fair in those cases to nullify those marriages and replace them with civil unions. But that's just me. If you're curious about what gay, lesbian, bisexual, & transgendered people expect from marriage, PFLAG has some information. The Human Rights Campaign also has more information.

Can confirm this for sure.

On a similar note, it's fascinating to see how much of the media industry is gay.

Not that I have any problems with it, but still, it's interesting.

Here's an interview with her in The Advocate. I think it's totally bizarre that her partner is the executive director of the Human Rights Campaign.

This is just another examples of city and state governments going way overboard. This is very much like the protest in Seattle of the WTO. Anyone remember those? I wouldn't vote for GWB's religious wrong for nothing. And I certainly don't buy into this crap about compassionate conservatism. Their record speaks for itself. If your not sure, then check out http://www.hrc.org/ for more information. Check out their scorecard too.