Published since 2005. San Francisco is a city that belongs to the people of the world. Hence this blog has a global focus. The name "Sam Spade's San Francisco" refers to an exciting era in the City's history, the time of Dashiell Hammett's fictional gumshoe and San Francisco character, Sam Spade. My name is Tom Dunn and I edit the blog. I'm not as exciting as Sam Spade, but I am definitely a San Francisco character.Contact or on Twitter -- Search blog below.
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Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Gay Rights and the Fortune 500
Conservative Christians are a diminishing force in politics. Even taking into consideration the occasional flare-ups from Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Alois Ratzinger) in the Vatican and Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, the influence of the Christian right-wing is slowly waning, an observation that suggests that Charles Darwin was right: species slowly evolve ... even Bible-banging fundamentalists evolve (although at a rate noticeably slower than most other vertebrates).
Yet, in 2006 conservative homophobic Christian groups still pull the strings of some elected officials, most notably members of the Republican party. Hopefully, after the presidential election, we will finally be able to send many of those conservative right-wing Republicans packing.
Corporate America, however, is well out in front and ahead of many of America's churches. More than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have clear policies that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Almost half of the companies offer health benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees.
Ten years ago only 28 companies offered same-sex partner benefits. The civil rights campaign for gay and lesbian Americans is winning. The outcome of the struggle is clear: the homophobes and conservative Bible-bangers are losing their hate-fight all across the board.
In 2005 GLBT rights were won for employees of Citigroup, IBM, DuPont and WalMart. This year Ford Motor Company, American Express and Exxon Mobil will vote to give GLBT employees protection against workplace discrimination.
But even as battles over gay rights flare up in the corporate world, there's no doubt about who's winning the war.
Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) said: "Corporate America is ahead of government in providing equal treatment for GLBT people because it knows that fairness is good for business."
San Francisco has a long-standing tradition and culture of supporting GLBT rights. Mayor Newsom, the Board of Supervisors and the City Attorney have all taken solid, firm and forward-thinking supportive positions on GLBT civil rights.
It is essential that we continue to demand GLBT non-discrimination policies of any and all corporate business entities that wish to do business in San Francisco. We must be vigilant and hold accountable any San Francisco business that fails to create and abide by a gender-based non-discrimination policy.
1 comments:
Anonymous said...
Somebody needs to procude a list of moderate and large size San Francisco businesses that offer same-sex partner benefits. That way we can know where to shop and with whom we should do business.
1 comments:
Somebody needs to procude a list of moderate and large size San Francisco businesses that offer same-sex partner benefits. That way we can know where to shop and with whom we should do business.
- Mark from San Francisco
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