Centrist Andrew Sullivan: "I was trying to explain last night to a non-Catholic just how dumb-struck many reformist Catholics are by the elevation of Ratzinger. And then I found a way to explain. This is the religious equivalent of having had four terms of George W. Bush only to find that his successor as president is Karl Rove. Get it now?"Read More......
In a move that angered many of the company's gay employees, the Microsoft Corporation, publicly perceived as the vanguard institution of the new economy, has taken a major political stand in favor of age-old discrimination.MICROSOFT SAYS ANTI-GAY POLICY SHIFT IS NOT ISOLATED INCIDENT
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....
At the April 4 meeting, Smith told members of GLEAM, the gay and lesbian employees group at Microsoft, that the company had switched its official stance to "neutral" on the bill, and took personal responsibility for the decision. He characterized the shift as part of a broader general review of company policy designed to more precisely formulate criteria for determining when Microsoft should involve itself in "social issues," but also disclosed the pressure that had been brought to bear on him by Hutcherson....
That one of the world's best-known corporations, synonymous with cutting-edge workplace innovation, would reverse its stance on such a basic piece of legislation because of threats from one minister seems to be yet another sign of the ongoing reverberations of last November's presidential election, when "moral values" voters were widely - if probably erroneously - perceived to have played the role of kingmaker in ensuring the reelection of President Bush.WHAT THE BILL DOES & OTHER COMPANIES WHO ENDORSE IT
"The pastor of a megachurch gets a meeting in two weeks with one of the top executives at one of the world's most powerful corporations. He makes these idle threats and he gets everything he wants," the GLEAM member who reported Smith's comments says. "Microsoft just got taken to the cleaners on this issue."
House Bill 1515 would protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment, housing, banking, insurance, and other matters by adding sexual orientation to a state law which already bars discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, and mental or physical handicap. More than a dozen states currently have similar laws on the books....MICROSOFT BRAGS "NO ONE WILL KNOW" IF COMPANY'S ACTIONS KILL PRO-GAY BILL
The list of high-profile companies that endorsed the bill this year reads like a who's who of the Pacific Northwest corporate world. It includes the Boeing Company, Nike, Coors Brewing, Qwest Communications, Washington Mutual, Hewlett-Packard, Corbis, Battelle Memorial Institute, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., and others. And as late as February 1, Microsoft, which issued a letter in support of the bill last year, appeared poised to do so again....
DeLee Shoemaker, an aide to former Governor Gary Locke who now handles state-level government relations for Microsoft, had issued a letter in support of the bill. "We are going to be providing copies of that letter to the committee," he said. McCurdy spoke too soon. Murray says that beginning on February 7 he began receiving calls from company employees informing him that Hutcherson was pressuring the company to change its position on the bill. Murray eventually contacted Shoemaker. She admitted to him that Microsoft was planning to change its position on the bill. "I told her, 'This is a crisis. It will kill the bill,'" he says. "She said no one will know."....SEE MICROSOFT LIE. LIE, MICROSOFT, LIE.
[A]ccording to Microsoft corporate communications spokesperson Tami Begasse... "Microsoft's position on the bill this year was not the result of "any external factors... In this case there was some apparent confusion surrounding some employees who testified as individual citizens in Olympia in February, and the company felt it was appropriate for the employees to make their roles clear as they were not representing or speaking for the company."Excuse me, but the "apparent confusion" wasn't over Microsoft's employees testifying and saying that Microsoft supported the legislation. That's all true and incontrovertible. According to the Stranger article, Microsoft supported the legislation last year:
"Microsoft, which issued a letter in support of the bill last year..."No confusion there. And Microsoft endorsed the bill this year too, before it changed its mind. Again from the Stranger:
At the April 4 meeting, [Microsoft's general counsel] told members of GLEAM, the gay and lesbian employees group at Microsoft, that the company had switched its official stance to "neutral" on the bill, and took personal responsibility for the decision.
DeLee Shoemaker, an aide to former Governor Gary Locke who now handles state-level government relations for Microsoft, had issued a letter in support of the bill.... She admitted to him that Microsoft was planning to change its position on the bill. "I told her, 'This is a crisis. It will kill the bill,'" he says. "She said no one will know."The confusion was not surrounding what the employees said. The confusion is because Microsoft was for the bill before it was against it.
Microsoft has been honored for its pioneering work on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community with the annual Corporate Vision Award of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center.Yeah, I don't think so.
Without Voinovich's support, Bolton's nomination faced being bottled up in the committee on a 9-9 tie vote that would not advance it to the full Senate.How much you want to bet the Republican now try to change the rules to force a tie vote to be reported out of committee? Read More......
They've got a house in rural Texas and a nice home-office setup on Pennsylvania Avenue. But for tax purposes, President Bush and his wife, Laura, claim a Chicago post office box as their "home address."Read More......
On the 1040 they signed, which the White House released last week, the listed home address is "Northern Trust Co., P.O. Box 803968, Chicago, IL 60680."
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Tuesday that's because Northern Trust handles the blind trust the couple uses for their holdings since Bush took office.
The state House tentatively approved legislation that would prohibit homosexuals and bisexuals from becoming foster parents.Not that gays and lesbians alone are to blame, it's also the government's fault, and if only we let private contractors handle our foster care system like they handle the prison system, everything will be okay:
Legislators voted 81-58 Tuesday to approve the ban in an amendment tacked on to a bill that would revamp the state's Child Protective Services agency. The full bill was tentatively approved 126-16. Final approval was expected Wednesday.
"It is our responsibility to make sure that we protect our most vulnerable children and I don't think we are doing that if we allow a foster parent that is homosexual or bisexual," said Rep. Robert Talton, a Republican, who introduced the amendment.
The bill also would spin off some of Child Protective Services' duties to the private sector, including foster care and case management. Private agencies already manage 75 percent of foster homes in Texas, and the state handles the rest. The bill would turn all of those functions over to private agencies.I wonder where the data is that says that of the nearly 20% of children in foster care who were abused or neglected, gays and bisexuals were such a huge portion of the problem. But hey, Republicans rarely if ever let the facts get in the way of a good gay bashing.
It seems that Rep. Talton has been at this for a while. From an Austin Chronicle article from 2003, Talton has said that homosexuality is "just like pedophilia is a learned behavior" and that rather than the horror of children growing up with two loving parents who happen to be gay or bisexual, "quite frankly, if it was me I would rather [leave] kids in orphanages. ... At least they have a chance of learning the proper values, and if that's not important, than I don't know what is."
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