If you're in Washington State, or maybe if you're not...

[solarbird]

EDIT: Well, the fundamentalists won; "yes" forces got it out of committee, but it just went down, 25-24. Two Democrats defected to join the Republican minourity, which voted as a unanimous bloc; Hargrove was one of the "no" votes, opposing it for religious reasons, saying, "I believe adultery is wrong, I believe sex outside marriage is wrong, I believe homosexuality is wrong. Therefore, I cannot give government protection to this behavior."

---

Below is a URL to action item forwarded to me by firni; it came first from AmericaBlog, about which I know little but which appears to be accurate in this case. In summary: Microsoft, under pressure from a radically fundamentalist Eastside activist preacher, pulled support for HB1515, the Washington State GBLT basic civil rights bill. The bill got shuffled into a hostile committee unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago; this may be why. It isn't dead yet, and there's going to be an effort to revive it; this is the furthest the bill has ever gotten, and was poised for approval before Microsoft dropped support.

Here is the article in The Stranger about the situation. It has been verified as reasonable by someone I know who is in a position to know. Explicit URL:

http://www.thestranger.com/2005-04-21/feature.html

Here is a URL to a long action item. Email addresses and phone numbers for contacts are at that URL, at the bottom. Explicit URL:

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/take-action-microsoft-abandons-gays.html

From the article in The Stranger:

The Stranger has learned that last month the $37-billion Redmond-based software behemoth quietly withdrew its support for House bill 1515, the anti-gay-discrimination bill currently under consideration by the Washington State legislature, after being pressured by the Evangelical Christian pastor of a suburban megachurch. The pastor, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, met with a senior Microsoft executive in February and threatened to organize a national boycott of the company's products if it did not change its stance on the legislation, according to gay rights activists and a Microsoft employee who attended a subsequent April 4 meeting where Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, told a group of gay staffers about Hutcherson's threat. Hutcherson also unsuccessfully demanded that the company fire two employees who had testified in favor of the bill.

I might also suggest contacting Jim Hargrove, the Democrat whose co-operation made it possible for the Republican minourity to shuffle the bill off to a hostile committee, asking that he reconsider and pull it back out. This would be particularly important if you live in his district. His email address of record is hargrove_ji AT leg.wa.gov.

Comments

[avram]

The bit that surprised me most: Microsoft considers itself vulnerable to a boycott.

[solarbird]

What's much scarier than what happened is that the fundamentalists now know that Microsoft can be bullied. What do they demand next? Who at Microsoft thinks if fundamentalists will boycott them over supporting basic civil rights legislation, that they won't do the same when it comes to, say, employee policy? They went after P&G - and are claiming success - just because P&G advertised to queers. Borg has buckled in a rather obvious way once; they'll go back for more.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the part that got me. What are those fundies going to use instead? LINUX? Right.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

oh CRAP!
ummm...

*OH* **CRAP**

that's not just nasty, that's PERSONAL! :( :( :(

[solarbird]

It's been very personal for a long time. Seriously. Very personal.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

yeah, but this escalates the entire kettle of fish! :( :(
NOT what you needed (or anyone else affected either)

*sigh*
i'm liking canada more & more every day (stephen harper of the conservatives excepted)

[solarbird]

It's certainly a blow. Previous efforts haven't been any less personal.

Hopefully more straight people will start to get more active. Some have been, but most of the time when things like this happen, it's met with mostly resounding silence. As the shuttling of the bill off to committee was greeted this year. Maybe the pressure aspect will help, I dunno.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

i hope more straight folks who are christians will get w/ the clue-age and realize that the rhetoric being spouted from many a pulpit is vile, hate-mongering, and contrary to the teachings of Christ...
but until folks are given credit for actually thinking, they will believe the lies they are told...

:( :(

i pray for your sake, and for others in similar footwear, that someone/somehow this gets righted PROPERLY so that hatred doesn't become entrenched into corporate documents as a way of life... it's already too entrenched in many other things and it disgusts me :(

*sigh*
preaching to the converted, i know, but DAMN! :( :( :(

I've got the money, show me the donation jar

[poetry-lady.livejournal.com]

I tend to do my active agitation with money. I asked A. in her journal, and I'll ask you here, too. Name your favorite organization for issues like this that is 501(c)3 (if possible) and I will write them a check, and send in the fucking Microsoft Matching form. I just got my tax refund, and I can wait to buy luxury things for a while. This is more important.

Love is love. Infinite love in infinite diversity. Hugs to you both.

Re: I've got the money, show me the donation jar

[solarbird]

I wanted to think about this a little. I think I'm going to suggest someone who doesn't work with law actions directly, but tries to approach the fundamentalists in their own language. Mel White's organisation Soulforce has received money from us several times, and while he's kind of a longshot in terms of succeeding, I think it's extremely important that someone be out there trying. And he is.

http://www.soulforce.org/

Totally OT...

[lirazel.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to let you know that I'm a friend of kphoebe, who is a friend of oshunanat, who has given me permission to... um... appropriate your Lack of Faith icon, with proper credit. It rocks, and I'm a religious-type person.

And with regard to the subject under discussion... On the one hand, that's awful. I hope their gay employees rise en mass. On the other hand, if they're this afraid of fundie sorts, how much must they fear their, you know, users.

Re: Totally OT...

[solarbird]

Sure, have fun. ^_^

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Emails written. This SO pisses me off.

[solarbird]

It worked for them, though. It stayed hidden just long enough.

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

This isn't surprising at all. Why does this surprise you? Microsoft has backed all kinds of intolerant bigoted legislation - in fact, I believe Pat Herbold was the chair for I-200. I mean, I guess if you're just noticing it now as it relates to gays maybe it's a big shocker, but if you follow these things - it's not new.

[solarbird]

The company had been for this for years before changing at the worst possible moment now. And did the company itself back I-200? I seriously don't remember that.

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

You should refresh your memory because it was a huge, huge deal. Personally, I would have taken note of something like this at the time and remembered it. But I'm funny like that - I notice it all, not just the things that might effect my own personal family.

I wrote a couple letters during the I-200 thing, and got basically the same answer GLEAM apparently got today.

[annathepiper]

According to this link, which I found by Googling for "i-200 + Microsoft", Borg was backing the No!200 campaign.

[solarbird]

Yeah, that's what I thought I remembered. Some executives, yes; Corporate, no.

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

They didn't. Many of the top managers donated tons of money, and in fact Bob Herbold's wife chaired the campaign. The company did NOT come out officially against it (like Boeing, Starbucks, many other large corporations) purportedly because of the Herbold tension. If they did it was literally at the 11th hour because I was involved in this issue, and I can tell you it was a huge deal. We met with them and got a huge schtick abuot staying neutral.

I couldn't find anything on an actual Seattle Times website. This behavior is pretty typical for Microsoft.

[(Anonymous)]

solarbird said,
> Well, the fundamentalists won; "yes" forces got it out of
> committee, but it just went down, 25-24. Two Democrats
> defected to join the Republican minourity, which voted as a
> unanimous bloc; Hargrove was one of the "no" votes, opposing
> it for religious reasons, saying, "I believe adultery is wrong,
> I believe sex outside marriage is wrong, I believe homosexuality
> is wrong. Therefore, I cannot give government protection to
> this behavior."

Obviously, gays can't avoid the "sex outside of marriage" problem until society legalizes same-sex marriage. Hargrove is speaking with his foot in his mouth. And what does adultery have to do with that particular bill?

solarbird, I have some more bad news. The Reverend Hutcherson who intimidated Microsoft runs an evangelical megachurch. We Christians have many different groupings: mainline conservative, mainline liberal, fundamentalist, evangelical, charismatic, Catholic, etc. Hutcherson is not a fundamentalist. This is not an old enemy rearing his ugly head; rather, the gay rights movement has a new enemy. Usually, evangelicals do not take an anti-gay stance. The evangelical megachurch movement is growing--if Reverend Hutherson's opinions spread to other megachurches, the gay rights movement will have a big enemy.

The black Christian community has long had an anti-gay stance. They are proponents of the moral values that Republicans like to tout, because they believe that strong families help defend against poverty, drug abuse, and racial discrimination. Somehow, they think that being anti-gay is part of being pro-family (I don't undertand the reasons for this viewpoint, but it seems to be common). Reverend Hutcherson is African American, so his opinions probably grew out of those beliefs.

Erin Schram

[solarbird]

Fundamentalist evangelicals, to be specific, who've been stridently anti-gay at least since the 90s. This church in particular; they're not actually new - this particular church has been involved in anti-queer politics since then, endorsing and working for several initiatives in the 90s that would have restricted our rights in many ways, such as excluding us from entire fields of employment, and mandating that the government not mention gayfolk in any way which is not specifically condemnational.

Hopefully you don't mean that midline/mainstream evangelicals are also becoming radically anti-queer, because if that happens, we should just leave the country now. We're already outnumbered about four, maybe even five to one, just from the fundamentalist/"conservative" evangelical count alone.

I'm all too aware that African-Americans are overwhelmingly socially conservative. Republicans have been working on wooing black voters for the last two election cycles by playing the anti-gay card to them. So far, it's not working all that well, but it could, at some point.

[(Anonymous)]

It was simply weird to see an evangelical pastor take a strong stand against gays. The fundamentalists are Biblical literalists, so they take seriously the Old Testament passages against homosexuality. The evangelicals instead focus on the four Gospels, and the Gospels say nothing about homosexuality, good or bad. To most evangelicals homosexual behavior is a minor sin that did not make it into the Ten Commandments, so it is not worth denouncing in the political arena. Now that I have researched more on Pastor Ken Hutcherson -- I had not realized that he was one of the organizers of the Mayday for Marriage Rally here in Washington D.C. -- I see that he is a fundamentalist evangelical as you say.

I would not expect that midline/mainstream evangelicals would become actively anti-gay, though I expect they would vote against gay rights laws just out of a vague sense that homosexuality is a sin. On the other hand, I am surprised that a church like Pastor Hutcherson's Antioch Bible Church would be so fervently anti-gay. He is trying to kindle an anti-gay movement throughout the entire Christian community in America, and alas, his efforts are not preordained to failure. Strange fads often run through the churches.

Erin Schram

[solarbird]

It was simply weird to see an evangelical pastor take a strong stand against gays.
Maybe in your world. ^_^

All of the major fundamentalists, particularly the politically active ones, call themselves evangelicals, or evangelical Christians. And he's not the only one trying to do this, not by any means.

his efforts are not preordained to failure. Strange fads often run through the churches.
Which is why I don't know whether I'll even be a citizen long enough to get through grad school. They want me to be illegal. It's seriously no fun.