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Tag: marriage equality
From Goldman Sachs to Microsoft – corporate support for gay civil rights puts pressure on backwards politicians
Support for gay marriage by companies as varied as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft and Starbucks is gathering steam to change policies in states that bar same-sex couples from tying the knot.
Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions on June 26 heartened supporters of the cause while showing an increased willingness of business to back the effort. In one case, more than 200 companies signed a brief against a federal law that denied benefits to same-sex couples. Five years ago, only a handful had lobbied against California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriages, the target of the high court’s other decision…
State legislators stand to feel the heat as more businesses speak out against laws in states including Texas, Florida and Michigan that recognize only heterosexual marriage. While fewer than half the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 are based in states that allow gays to wed, most already have policies that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
“Companies do have the choice where they locate, where they set up shop,” said Kellie McElhaney, founding faculty director of the Center for Responsible Business at the University of California Berkeley. Local policies on sexual orientation “will eventually become part of the choice process…”
Goldman Sachs and Expedia are among businesses gearing up to support a federal bill to prevent workforce discrimination based on sexual orientation. Of Fortune 500 companies, 88 percent include orientation in their nondiscrimination policies and more than 60 percent offer domestic partner health benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Companies moved ahead on providing health benefits for same-sex couples and adopting nondiscrimination rules since the 1990s just as Congress went in the opposite direction to approve the federal government’s rejection of gay marriage in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Now, corporate America is pushing for uniform laws that protect against workplace discrimination, said Edith Hunt, Goldman Sachs’s chief diversity officer…
Hillary offers her public stance on marriage equality
Overdue? You betcha. American politicians always make very political decisions.
I can tell you from personal experience that Hillary has supported equal civil rights for all Americans through all of her adult career in law – and in politics. But, the latter quality was lived as a Democratic politician – earlier times were only bounded by her views on constitutional law.
Now that it seems likely she’ll be campaigning for the presidency in 2016, it’s central to that task that she rely on the progressive wing of the Democrat Party – and progressives and independents outside that party. Just as did Barack Obama. Would she be as conservative a president as Obama? On foreign policy – probably yes. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for a major swing of the mainstream of Democrats into serious work for peace. On domestic policy – probably no. I think she understands the needs of working folks, is less divorced from the roots of American labor than Obama or the hierarchy of the Democrat power structure.
These are trends that differentiate Democratic politicians from Republicans. They ain’t earthshaking differences; but, especially on questions of equal opportunity and civil rights – they make all the difference in the world.
Marriage equality is proving good for New York business
Michael Bloomberg, Christine C. Quinn, Mario Cuomo march in 2011 NYC LGBT Pride March
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
Many New Yorkers and thousands of visitors this weekend may make last month’s Gay Pride celebrations seem tepid. Beginning Sunday, New York’s same-sex couples will become eligible for marriage licenses. Tens of thousands of those couples are expected to marry over the next few years, and their vows will resonate across America…
New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and city leaders must be cheering the economic shot in the arm as hotels, restaurants, caterers, florists and legions of vendors welcome the wedding and honeymoon brigades. Some estimate nearly $400 million in revenues for the state over the next three years.
These rewards are also the result of changing tides among American corporations and employers over recent decades. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s same-sex marriage legislation was endorsed not only by major corporations like Xerox and Google but by scores of smaller business owners across the state.
First, many employers already “get it.” Beginning in 1982 with New York’s Village Voice, thousands of employers have added spousal-equivalent work benefits including health coverage for their workers with same-sex partners. Today, nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies do so…
If employers give equal benefits to same-sex couples, why worry about marital status? Ask employers in New Jersey, where same-sex civil unions are the law instead. Civil unions, domestic partnerships and other makeshift legal arrangements offer some measure of legal protection. But real-world experience shows that they do not measure up in crucial ways.
“Marriage lite” not only creates a social apartheid among families, it opens significant gaps, confusion and conflicts that businesses confront in areas such as survivor benefits, pensions and bankruptcies, along with disparate tax treatment at the state and federal level.
Keeping it simple and consistent are important to businesses…Furthermore, administering payrolls and maintaining accurate, timely benefits and tax withholding procedures can strain any employer. When you add the complexity that accompanies different marital and tax status for many couples, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and workplace to workplace, it is another unacceptable and costly burden on business.
Sooner rather than later, chambers of commerce will recognize that their best interests are served by the simplicity, uniformity and cost savings that come with marriage equality across the nation…
Part of today’s political dichotomies is the decline in principles and standards of traditional organizations of all types. Churches, political parties – local and national, trade organizations and national business representatives like the US Chamber of Commerce have walked away from any pretense of representing a broad base.
Just as fundamentalist churches less and less often engage in dialogue with the broad reach of Christianity, the US Chamber of Commerce long ago turned its back on small business. In truth there are whole segments of American commerce ignored or deliberately affronted by the entrenched leadership of the Chamber. If you ain’t from Big Oil or Pharma or Insurance and Finance – just punch their meal ticket; but, don’t waste anyone’s time with issues outside of extraction taxes or capital gains.
Eideard 