U.S. companies getting better on gay, lesbian, transgender policies

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 9/18/7 | Bernadette Tansey

[SmithL]

The number of U.S. companies whose employment policies received the top rating from a civil rights organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people has risen 41 percent since the group's last survey in 2006, the association said Monday.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation said 195 companies scored a full 100 points on its most recent annual evaluation, called the Corporate Equality Index, which recognizes employers for offering health insurance to domestic partners, forbidding job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, providing diversity training and other practices.

The companies with perfect grades, which include Fortune 500 members, employ more than 8.3 million workers. When the first of the six surveys was completed in 2002, top marks went to only 13 of the 319 companies rated. Those 13 companies employed 690,000 people.

"More businesses than ever before have recognized the value of a diverse and dedicated workforce," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "More importantly, these employers understand that discrimination against GLBT workers will ultimately hurt their ability to compete in the global marketplace."

Two Bay Area companies have scored 100 in every survey from 2002 on - Apple Inc. of Cupertino and Intel Corp. of Santa Clara. Among the Northern California companies that have received top marks for two or more years are computer industry heavyweights Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Sun Microsystems Inc. of Santa Clara and Mountain View's Google Inc.; San Ramon oil giant Chevron Corp.; and Wells Fargo & Co., utility firm PG&E and clothing manufacturer Gap Inc., all of San Francisco.

Companies that boosted their former good grades into the top ranking in the survey include Oracle Corp. of Redwood City, Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco, Electronic Arts of Redwood City and Yahoo Inc. of Sunnyvale.

[Vaquero]

U.S. companies getting BETTER on gay, lesbian, transgender policies

How Convoluted.

[bolobaby]

Depends on what you consider “better.”

If you think allowing obvious transgenders to be the face of your business by putting them in positions that deal with customers is “better” than, yeah, things are great!

[Rodm]

Broad is the path that leads to destruction.

[Disambiguator]

I’m surprised they didn’t mention Levi Strauss & Co. They are based in SF and have been “homogenated” for many years.

[ConorMacNessa]

You forgot the barf alert.

[wildcatf4f3]

At last something to make me proud to be an American again! sarc/off

[Neoliberalnot]

I hear the pedophiles and beastophiles were removed from the list because of the objections of several pedophobes and beastophobes. These intolerant bigots are ignorant, toothless people from Massachusetts.

[relictele]

*Sigh* I know it’s SFGate/Chronicle but this story/headline appears in the BUSINESS section by a staff writer and is nothing more than an unvarnished opinion piece.

I don’t expect the Chron to become Focus on the Family overnight but at least they should be able to classify their content correctly.

[MEGoody]

I wouldn’t call this ‘getting better’.

[Gabz]

At the same time the list of companies that are firing or refusing to hire people who use tobacco products keeps on getting longer and longer...........

With that said, as long as it is not the government mandating such policies, the businesses are perfectly within their rights to set these type policies.

[SmithL]

No I didn’t. You aren’t paying attention.

[theBuckwheat]

It should not pass without notice that is article is the regurgitation of the summary of a report by a gay advocacy group, Human Rights Campaign.

[theBuckwheat]

Let me add that this is as good as any illustration of how the MSM acts as an echo chamber for (mainly leftist) causes they support. The Human Rights Campaign issues a report, but the MSM cannot just print the HRC report like one would reprint the Communist Manifesto. It would be too blatant. So, they write a “story” that “hails” the “progress” that the report “brings to light”, maybe without even mentioning the report directly or even who published the report.

To see the effect, a search of news.google.com for “companies gay lesbian policies” returned 385 stories with varied headlines that were constant on the theme that being gay-friendly is good.

see for yourself at:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=companies++gay+lesbian+policies&btnG=Search

[traditional1]

"have recognized the value of a diverse and dedicated workforce"

No; more legal departments have recommended the economics of avoiding extortion-schemes (aka, civil lawsuits), where runaway juries award millions of dollars to sex deviate demands (via the good ol' ACLU).

These Democrat voter-base members are not exactly what makes a company profitable, nor would you enjoy being in front of them in line at the voting booth:

This is what we get for being "tolerant".....

[NKStarr]

>>as long as it is not the government mandating such policies, the businesses are perfectly within their rights to set these type policies<<

Yes.
Conservatives should limit criticism to government-mandated anti-discrimination bills like ENDA. The free market allows businesses that want to provide benefits to gays, etc. to do so.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Hey...that’s my boss. Don’t make fun

[fromscratchmom]

“Conservatives should limit criticism to government-mandated anti-discrimination bills like ENDA. The free market allows businesses that want to provide benefits to gays, etc. to do so.”

This assumes that the only public discussions that conservatives can involve themselves in are discussions about laws and politics. There is no legitimate basis for silencing conservatives on their religionious views or on their opinions.

My political philosophies do not lean towards legislating what these businesses should do. However I can see no reason why conservatives can’t discuss opinions and views that show that they do not appreciate the decisions that the businesses are making no matter what the basis for thier comments.

[NKStarr]

>>My political philosophies do not lean towards legislating what these businesses should do.<<

Good!

>>However I can see no reason why conservatives can’t discuss opinions and views that show that they do not appreciate the decisions that the businesses are making no matter what the basis for thier comments.<<

Obviously, as individuals we are free to patronize or not patronize any businesses for whatever reasons we choose. It just seems to me that if we are speaking in a corporate sense for political conservatism then we ought to confine ourselves to limiting the power of the state to impose its agenda on business.

[fromscratchmom]

I would respectfully disagree.

I think that limiting ourselves to that extent is not necessary and not effective in the sense that I suspect that you think it is. I think you and I have hit on a difference between some conservatives and others that has been plaguing the conservative movement for years.

There are many instances where conservatives seem to do all in their power to show restraint and to seem to be calm and objective, which sounds like it would be all to the good. However it may not be what it seems. It may be that by limiting themselves to the extent that they have, what they have primarily acccomplished is to lose battles of ideals and lose ground within society, while liberals have anashamedly evangelized our society to their way of thinking on almost every topic.

Conservatives need to be willing to stand-up for their views and to acknowlege that all of our views have consequences within society. The more we have silenced ourselves the more we have hamstringed ourselves. We cannot afford to continue to limit ourselves in ways that negatively impact the whole of our political process and our society with all of its many facets.

If you are admittedly religious, your religious views probably effect almost every view you have and there is no reason to deny it. Rather you should stand up for what you believe in or not bother pretending to believe it.

If you are not religious, you may very well subscribe to the view that our laws are derived solely from what we consent to as a group, which means that what we think and what we see as good for society matters.

Neither of these things should stop intelligent people from having intelligent discourse where we can say, this is what I think about this politically and this is what I think about it outside of the political ramifications.

(ie. “so and so is living a lifestyle that statistically leads to premature death and liberal thinking running rampant through large corporations that now seek to be a part of evangelizing society to accept something that is neither good for society nor good for their own corporation is a crazy situation.)