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."

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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.