http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7645856/
Quote:
SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. may rethink its decision to withdraw support for state legislation that would ban discrimination against gays and lesbians, Chairman Bill Gates says.
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In an interview with The Seattle Times, Gates said he was surprised by the fierce criticism that followed the company’s decision to no longer back a state gay rights bill it had supported in previous years. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)
The legislation failed by one vote in the state Senate on Thursday, spurring outrage among advocates who accused Microsoft of caving to political pressure from an evangelical pastor.
“Next time this one comes around, we’ll see,” Gates said in the story published Tuesday. “We certainly have a lot of employees who sent us mail. Next time it comes around that’ll be a major factor for us to take into consideration.”
Microsoft, one of the first companies to offer domestic partner benefits to gay employees, has denied that the pastor or anyone else outside the company influenced its decision. Gates said executives hadn’t expected a backlash.
“Well, we didn’t expect that kind of visibility for it,” Gates was quoted as saying. “After all, Microsoft’s position on a political bill, has that ever caused something to pass or not pass? Is it good, is it bad? I don’t know.”
Gates echoed the statement Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made in an e-mail to employees on Friday, explaining that the company decided before the legislative session began that it should to narrow its focus on a shorter list of issues directly affecting the business.
Two Microsoft employees had testified in support of the anti-discrimination measure.
The Rev. Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond subsequently met with Microsoft executives and threatened to organize a national boycott of Microsoft products if it continued to support the bill.
Gates said he and Ballmer both support the measure personally but, “We won’t always pick every issue for the company to have a position on.”
Gay rights groups have said they feel betrayed.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center asked Microsoft to return a civil rights award it gave the company in 2001. Liberal Web bloggers have urged their critics to organize their own Microsoft boycott.
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I've been a member of several discussions about why things like Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action are excellent theories but are failing miserably in their practice, but about once a week I come across a story like this.
What I'm really wondering is what the hell happened to EQUAL rights?! Why is is that time and again these groups introduce these divisive and discriminatory pieces of legislation under the guise of some minority groups rights when the only viable outcome in the long run is simply a shift in the discrimination? I understand that the world isn't perfect and that there are people that truly do discriminate against people because of their race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or hell even the way they part their damn hair, but why this confuses me is that laws of this nature only truly serve to reinforce these stereotypes and in my mind foster the very resentment and hostility that they claim to be pre-empting!
To be honest for quite some time I've been bitter about the state of "gay and lesbian rights" in the modern world. Why is it that I'm required to be sensitive about offending them with my mannerism, my speech, and my public behavior but at the same time it's not only acceptable but expected that they should be allowed to completely disregard any of my feelings or beliefs? If I hosted a "hetero-pride" parade they would throw my ass in jail, but a gay-pride parade involving behaviors that would get anyone else thrown in jail for indecency, i.e. the ones exposing themselves, is commonplace!
So where is the equality that we're supposedly fostering with these new laws? Would you support a legislation like this and why or why not?
I hope I'm not coming across as a complete bigot, I have 2 gay men as roommates and above anything else they're people, we watch movies, have a beer, hang out, and I could care less who they prefer to sleep with, so why must these fanatics create a larger issue on a subject that has been resolving itself over the last several decades? Stop trying to grant the minority groups special privleges and alot EVERYONE the same EQUAL rights. If they want to get married, let them it's none of my damn business. If they want a job, wonderful, that's more than I can say for a lot of the people living off welfare right now. We're all human, when will the day come that we stop qualifying people based on separatist criteria and treat each as humans?