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Microsoft Abandons Gay Rights Bill
andrewagill writes "Microsoft has withdrawn support from a bill that would "protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment, housing, banking, insurance, and other matters by adding sexual orientation to a state law which already bars discrimination" of the other usual suspects. Odd, given their previous accolades from the GLBT community, and their prior public support for the bill."
Followed by
An Apple a day keeps the bigot away?As much as I am for civil rights and gay marriage, this is inflammatory. Just because Microsoft changed their stance from pro to neutral (not against), this makes them bigoted? I don't buy that. I don't buy that at all.
This is the same kind of black and white reasoning that George W. Bush uses. "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists." Just because someone wants to back away from the battle, doesn't mean all of a sudden that they're on the side of the religious right.
I know it's in-fashion to bash Microsoft on this site, but the fellow who wrote this article takes any sort of GBLA equality achievements with a grain of salt. Kind of like giving a donation to a charity the first time around, and being called stingy for not doing so every time.
Sure, it's disappointing that they backed off. Sure, I hope they change their mind, and I hope plenty of people call them. But to call them bigoted for turning neutral (and not against) is simply going too far.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Anyone else read this as Microsoft Abandons Gay Bill?
Windows is still gay.
...Mac OS X as a threat (rightly, in my opinion), so they are now attacking the problem at the source.
Would that be the same consumer market that passed anti-gay marriage laws in 11 different states last November?
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand this sig, and those that beat up people who do.
People can be right assholes about this. Having been told to my face by my manager "look, we'd really love to keep you on but I'm afraid there's no legal protection to you if we fire you over your homosexuality, so we're forced to let you go. Please don't hesitate to contact me if there's ANYTHING we can do for you."
And you thought Microsoft were the kings of doublespeak & twisted convoluted logic.
Unfortunately, legal protections can only go so far. If someone wants to fire an employee because they don't like the employee's partner, then they'll find a reason quickly enough.
The full article can be found here:l
http://www.thestranger.com/2005-04-21/feature.htm
He has noting on him.
The bill was basically stalled as many other unrelated things got tacked onto it. The spirit of the bill was so diluted it was useless.
MS will support a new bill, which adheres to the original with none of the extra fluff.
The truley amazing thing about this is that MS is scared of someone. Just think about that for a second. The biggest software company in the world, with a monopoly on the desktop and office suite markets scared of someone. Anyone.
It makes one wonder if there is something rotten in Redmond.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
its because software companies have these things called people. Only they are not "things" they are human beings and should be treated as such...
and hint hint... treating your people BETTER usually results in BETTER software with BETTER profits...
I take it you never saw the movie "Philadelphia" ?
Let's say you have a picture of your partner on your desk. You might be told that personal pictures are "inappropriate"... even though others have pictures of their wives or husbands on their desks. You might be passed over for promotion, get your hours cut, or fired for "poor performance" or "poor attitude."
Sure, you can be gay at work without anyone knowing... if you never talk about your personal life... and you laugh along with everyone else when someone makes a "faggot" joke... and you express the same level of admiration for this week's actress or calendar model of choice... and you never refer to your partner in any way that sounds like you aren't "just friends"...
wants to be the first monkey to touch the monolith
You take that back! You take that back right now! How DARE you insult homosexuals like that!
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Gay customers buy a lot of computers, and they tend to be cultural trend-setters or bellweathers, i.e. the people who Microsoft is trying to attract from Apple.
Also, large companies have a real interest in ensuring that their homebase becomes a culturally vibrant area which attracts professionals and creative types. Gay-friendly laws encourage cultural vibrancy and improve the hiring pool, since people won't live in cities with a reputation for intolerance. Just look at Procter & Gamble's opposition to the Ohio anti-gay constitutional amendment.
(Although, being based in Cleveland, P&G had a little more incentive than MS...)
Atleast people are allowed to be gay in USA. In India a court in New Delhi declared being gay a crime punishable by law.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but here's a quote from the good Pastor, during the Senate Hearing on HB1515, on March 22nd:
(He then went on to say that homosexuals want to molest young boys.)
Sorry, but with that sort of intolerance, this man has no right to call himself a servant of God.
All his parishoners should be ashamed.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Specifically, a law that is totally unrelated to their industry
Considering the law in no small part had to do with discrimination in employment situations, I would imagine it is totally related to companies that...you know.....employ people.
100 posts in, and you still haven't given the obvious answer to this!
What does he have on Bill? Well, when the head of MS starts desperately following bizarre orders from Evangelicals, you realize he's gotta be looking for allies. My guess is, his contract is expiring soon, and he's looking for a loophole.
Now, we know Satan's contracts are even tighter than MS's, so Bill's trying to get some extra-judicial help. That's all.
--LWM
Thank god. I for one can't go anywhere without certainly gay people peering at me in the most odd way.
I've installed locks on all my doors and windows so those goddamned gays can't sneak in and get up to no good. One look at those pillows, your curtains and you know you've been hit by the gays.
I've tried to do my part in my community by trying to keep tabs on them. I've taken some surveillance at the local YMCA. I've swept the mall and tried on some red swimware. Yet gay people keep decidedly peering at me in the most peculiar way.
We must stop the gay conspiracy and the gay media conspiracy, with their forced-redecoration squads running amok, frightening children and installing remarkably tasteful yet a little too frilly curtain vestments on every doorway and awning in this whole country. They want to take away our rights, to have our own curtains. The gay media conspiracy keeps a lid on it, however.
I urge you to ban gay marriage/civil unions in your state or your curtains may be next!
I can't believe MS is really afraid of a religious-right boycott, especially when they're still the darlings of the other side of the Republican party (the economic right).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
This pastor is a disgrace. The people who are opposed to gay marriage are actually very disturbed people who are in denial. They can't accept that two people of the same gender can experience love and commemorate that love in marriage. Here is is folks, the plain truth:
The love that two men or two women feel for each other is no different than the love that a heterosexual couple experiences. There is no difference at all. None. That same warm indescribably wonderful feeling that a hetero remembers (I'm straight, so I know what it feels like) feeling on their wedding day is no different from what a gay man or a lesbian woman would feel on their wedding day. But our sick society is trying to deny that love can be experienced outside of a heterosexual relationship. It makes them so uncomfortable that they cover their ears and scream loudly, "I'm not listening! I'm not listening! I'm not listening"!
I really hate sharing this country with such superstitious and frightened people.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
If you're talking marriage, then that's a different animal.
Please be consistent from one senetence of your post to the next.
Federal law assignes some 1,080 benefits to married couples. Gays and Lesbians are excluded from those benefits. That is clearly not treating the same! They don't want special laws or consideration; they want to be treated just like everybody else.
Yep, that's right. Gays want to join that special club of people who don't have to worry about being attacked on the street or in their own homes. They want to have those special rights like hospital visits and the ability to make medical decisions should their long-term partner become incapacitated. Let's not forget about the special right to keep a job without fear of harassment or being laid off for "poor performance," or any of the other hundreds of "special" rights the rest of the country takes for granted.
When a cat can understand the concept of marriage, its rights and responsabilities, and becomes a valid citizen of the country it lives in, then it should be granted marriage rights. Until then, a cat is a cat, and people are people.
Double check your history. Gay relationships are out of fashion only in the current time. Historically in many cultures they have been accepted and even praised.
Um, no. Marches and political clout are to *precisely* get us what you already have. I must have missed the memo about how we're trying to take over the world or something. We're not trying to legislate how we're thought of; we just want the same *rights*.
What rights? Lets just look at marriage rights, shall we? Here's just a handful.
* Access to social security after a spouse's death
* Access to health ensurance through the spouse's workplace
* The right to custody of children after divorce
* Visitation rights for non-biological children
* Joint parenting rights, such as access to children's school records
* Bereveament leave after death of a spouse
* Burial determination after the death of a spouse
* Domestic violence intervention
* Sick leave to care for a spouse or non-biological child
* Legal validation of a long term relationship
* Ability to live in neighborhoods deemed "families only"
* Access to life insurance in spouse's workplace
* Access to survivor benefits in case of emergency
* Access to spouse's crime victims' recovery benefits
* Ability to file wrongful death claims
* Right to shared property, child support, and alimony after divorce
* Ability to file joint home and auto insurance policies
* Joint rental leases with automatic renewal if spouse dies or leaves
* Access to adopting children
* Automatic inheritance of shared assets after spouse's death
* Automatic inheritance of retirement savings tax-free after spouse's death
* Automatic exemption of property tax increases on shared assets gained after spouse's death
* Ability to file joint tax returns
* Access to tax breaks for married couples
* Assumption of spouse's pension after death
* Ability to file joint bankruptcy
* Ability to collect unemployment benefit after leaving a job to relocate because of spouse's job move
* Ability to transfer property from one spouse to aother without transfer tax consequences
* Access to fostering children
* Automatic next-of-kin status for emergency medical decisions and hospital visitation status
* Immigration and residency priority for spouses from other countries
* Ability to invoke spousal privilege in a court of law
* Access to reduced rate memberships at health clubs, social clubs, organizations.
* Prison visitation rights
Many, many more.
We're tired of being second class citizens. Sick of it, really. I can just picture you, back in the 1960s, claiming that blacks "just want political clout and to march". It's the same sort of tripe that they got then, and we're taking it now.
Marriage is not "a different animal". First off, just from a technical perspective, civil unions are generally pretty worthless. the most important benefits are at the federal level. Many private benefits are simply based on the word "marriage" as well (private organizations have the right to exclude same sex couples if they want, and few would argue them that, despite what Fox News and the like tell you; the issue is that many organizations simply want a legal status, and use whatever the government decides is "married"). Civil unions are "consolation prize"; separate-but-equal (but not really equal) really sucks.
But most importantly of all: It is not *your* institution. Because *your* church, or whatnot, says that it's wrong, means nothing to me. My partner and I were married in a Unitarian church; they recognize and honor same sex marriages. Who are *you* to say that my religion's viewpoint is of lesser value than your own?
The American Anthropological Society completely disagrees with the notion that marriage has always been as it is now, and that same sex marriages are either ahistorical or harmful. Hundreds of societies throughout history have had them. Up until recently, interracial marriages were illegal in the US. Before that, marriages between African Americans were banned, period. For the
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
That's not really true. Human beings are patterned to pursue things that cause them pleasure the same as Pavlov's dogs.
My experience, many moons ago, was that I knew that I was attracted to women long before I had experienced sexual ecstacy with a woman. Which contradicts your assertion that it is all learned.
I presume that gays and lesbians, for the most part, have had pretty similar experiences.
I say treat them the same - -that means NO special laws or consideration. Just like everybody else.
Absolutely!
Which is why they should be able to get married, and to live and work without fear of discrimination.
As for the marriage issue, I think a lot of people don't understand that marriage is far more than just an indication to society of two people being long term partners. There's a whole shedload of legal implications, such as ability to follow your partner to different places with a career change, or implications for what can be left in the event of your partner's death (especially from a taxation point of view), even implications for access to your partner under certain medical care situations. IANAL, so I can't fill you in on the details.. I'm also referring more to the situation in the UK, but I'm sure it's much the same in the US.
Anybody with more legal knowledge care to comment?
Explain to me why 3 men and a cat can't get married but 2 men can?
Hint: Cats aren't human. Humans are.
Furthermore a cat is incapable of consenting to such a union.
If marriage has got anything to do with ability to reproduce then anybody incapable of reproduction shouldn't be able to marry.
On the other hand, if it doesn't have anything to do with reproduction, then why are you so worried about letting same sex couples marry?
If you feel it would devalue "normal" marriages, then you need to take a close look at mariage statistics. They really can't get much more devalued than they already are.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
If you look at the DSM-III, before the 4th edition, you will see homosexuality listed as a disease.
Historically, psychology and medicine in general, has a piss poor record for determining what is and isn't a disease. This is the same discipline that pushed frontal lobotomies as a valid "treatment" right up until the 60's.
Why is it states are passing referendums, public referendums, where homosexual marrige is outlawed by votes over 80%?
Because the U.S. is full of prejudiced, racist, intolerant, uneducated, fuckheads.
The republican party found one single issue they can bank on. As long as the republicans supply a candidate who is for defending marrige as defined between a man and a woman, they will keep winning elections. It is the ONLY reason bush won the last election.
You're probably right. But just because most people are unethical and want to tell other people what is and is not morally right and wrong (as if they were some sort of authority) a few of us like to vote our consciences, even if we are a minority. You see a hundred years ago the majority of people thought black people were an inferior race. Two hundred years ago the majority of people thought women were inferior to men, weaker and less intelligent and should not be allowed to own property of their own. Four hundred years ago anyone who said the earth revolved around the sun was declared an evil heretic who had to be burned to protect society.
The majority is not always right. The Bill of rights exists to protect the people from the government and the minorities from the majorities. Ben Franklin said, "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep trying to decide what to have for dinner." It is the reason for the limits on the government's power.
You see just because you are a prejudiced mental reject does not mean that if some day prejudiced mental rejects are in the minority open-minded people should be able to discriminate against them in the workplace if their religion does not get in the way of their job.
American democracy has a long tradition of protecting the minority from the majority. I guess that no longer sits well with you? When can I expect the death camps to begin?
Activist Judges? Please explain to me what an activist judge is. As far as my study of law is concerned, judges evaluate laws and determine their legitimacy as a balance against over-reaching legislatures. Are you claiming that these judges are ignoring precedent or US legal theory like the SCOTUS did in Bush vs. Gore?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
The point is that Microsoft's market share is
Surely not - shouldn't the real point be why does a human rights bill need the financial backing of a big company to get passed?
That's the issue as far as I'm concerned. Has the US ideals of democracy sunk so low that this is just a given now and not worthy of comment?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Obligatory Daily Show quote: "Just because it happens in nature, does not make it natural, buster!"
You've *got* to be kidding. Christians are one of the least-discriminated-against groups in this country. At the moment, the most-bashed group is the liberals. Fundamentalist Christians also get slammed, but *not* Christians, as a general rule.
With the fundamentalists, it isn't so much their religion that gets slammed, but the willful ignorance that goes along with it. "Intelligent design" is *not* science, no matter how many times you say them in the same sentence. Getting upset at gay couples for wanting the same recognition as non-gay couples is not socially fair, no matter how much anal sex or cunnilingus upsets your delicate sensibilities. And unfortunately, fundamentalists are one of the groups to do the most discriminating.
That's the difference. There are many Christians I hold in great esteem, and would not dare (or even want) to impugn their beliefs. I don't even believe fundamentalists are real Christians; I believe they are a cult.
But that's perhaps a kneejerk reaction to those fundamentalists who believe Mormonism, Catholicism, and Unitarianism are "just" cults.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
More specifically, those were state CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS not just state laws. The whole reason for that is because they're afraid that activist judges would overturn laws already in the books. Currently 39 states have "Defense of Marriage Acts" as laws, as well as the federal DOMA.
Even more specifically, they're afraid that knowledgable and competent judges will rightly find their bigoted and pointless laws in violation of constitutional protections, and over-turn them. So they have to circumvent the fact that the courts aren't packed with reactionary bigots by encoding their own bigotry and ignorance right into the constitution itself.
It wasn't activist judges that made gay marriage legal in Massachusettes. A valid court case was brought before the judges and the judges rightly ruled that there was no constitutional reason to not grant the civil licence, and turned the issue back to the legislature to rectify. Which they did. And gee, the sky didn't fall.
Equal Protection under the law: it's for everybody.
Religious right-wing bigots hate that, though, which is why they're going through and trying to circumvent rational judicial rulings by encoding their hateful bigotry into the very constitutions themselves.
There's a reason the founding fathers put the Bill of Rights in there and stated over and over again that the Constitution and its amendments were there to protect minorities from the "tyranny of the majority". Civil Rights should never be put up to a popular vote. An individuals basic and fundamental rights should never be subjected to mob rule.
It should be noted that when interracial marriage was legalized, over 90% of the population was against interracial marriage. It should also be noted that virtually all of the histrionic gnashing of teeth about the disaster that "changing marriage" would unleash upon the country that we're seeing over the gay marriage issue is almost identical to the same crap that was spewed by foes of interracial marriage several decades ago.
And yes, marriage is a civil right. Among the more than 1000 rights granted by a civil marriage license are such things as freedom from being compelled by the state to testify against your spouse, and the freedom from having the government break up your family and deport a spouse because they're not a citizen. These are rights that are not available in any other way, through any other legal document that can ever be drawn up.
The simple fact is that these laws are not only pointlessly punitive encoding of ignorant bigotry into law, but they're violations of religious freedom. My religion, and the religions of a great many people, does not prohibit same-sex unions or marriages. The only real justifications ever cited against same-sex marriages are religious in nature. Why should the dogma of one religion be encoded into law (or the constitution) and not another? The state, as yet, has cited absolutely no compelling reason for denying gay couples a civil marriage license.
As long as two athiests who cannot have children (like my friends Mark and Jennifer) can go down to the justice of the peace and get a marriage license with nothing more than the required fee and two witnesses, then I can see no rational, reasonable, or ethical justification for denying the same exact right to a gay couple.
But that's just my two cents.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't