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Microsoft Pushes For Gay Marriage In Washington State
New submitter plsenjy writes "An article in the Atlantic outlines how Microsoft Corp. has submitted its support for a Washington State provision allowing gay couples to marry. Citing the company's inability to compete for top talent in the face of discrimination, Microsoft joins other firms such as Nike and Vulcan to effectively change moral policy from the top-down."
As much as I personally love bashing MS, the reality is that they've had this position for quite a while now. For instance they gave $100k to support Ref 71 which if passed would allow the everything but marriage bill to be enacted. And IIRC that was hardly the first time they supported the general cause of equality for sexual minorities either.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/2010010778_microsoftgave100000to.html
Sorry, Microsoft was well ahead of Google when it comes to gay rights (like giving insurance and other benefits to same-sex domestic partners in 1993 before Google was founded). Read about GLEAM (Gay and Lesbian Employees at Microsoft) to get a concise summary of gay support by Microsoft.
While its hard to clearly separate religious and government institutions that existed before the adoption of the norm of church/state separation in the host society (which really begins in the modern era), marriage historically was largely governed principal by general, rather than any special ecclesiastic, law even in the Christian West through the early part of the Middle Ages, was performed under local customs that often predated the local adoption of Christianity, and didn't involve the clergy at all; during the Middle Ages, the Church became involved, first by having clergy present as witnesses (though still, for some time, prohibiting marriage inside the sanctuary of a church), and later -- as the Church acquired a role as a kind of "international government" in Europe, through prescribed rites and an active regulatory role.
It is more defensible to reverse this to say "if the Church hadn't become a quasi-governmental entity and expanded its area of regulation into marriage and other traditional areas of government control, we wouldn't need to have this debate."
The idea that marriage was an institution of the church before it was an institution of government governing the distribution of property is nearly as historically inaccurate as the idea that it is some kind of universal truth that marriage has (prior to recent years) historically always been between one genetic male and one genetic female.