More Companies Come Out on The Gay Side



study released this week by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s biggest advocacy and lobbying group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, shows that big companies are continuing to increase their protections for LGBT workers. They are also speaking out more in favor of same-sex marriage rights.
The HRC has been running its survey, called the Corporate Equality Index, since 2001. It rates companies based on how hospitable 
their workplace policies are for LGBT employees, evaluating everything from insurance and other benefits for same sex partners, to companies’ ability to recruit and retain LGBT workers and as of last year, insurance coverage for gender reassignment surgery.
Of 1,400 companies surveyed this year, 252 got a perfect score of 100, meaning they met all of HRC’s criteria. That’s up from 190 companies last year and just 13 when HRC first started doing the survey 11 years ago. Among the big businesses to get a perfect score this year: Bank of America, Hewlett Packard and Citigroup. Newcomers to the list this year include AIG, General Motors and Verizon.
In general, companies that tend to be highly competitive in hiring, like technology, consulting and financial services firms, tend to get better scores than businesses like manufacturing and oil and gas. But there are notable exceptions, including Ford MotorChevron, BP and Alcoa.
Along with improving protections and benefits for LGBT workers, businesses are increasingly making public their support of same-sex marriage, says Deena Fidas, an HRC deputy director. Over the last 18 months, more than 70 big businesses made statements supporting same-sex marriage or opposing gay-marriage bans.
Why are companies speaking out? “The writing is on the wall in terms of where public opinion is moving and where voters are moving,” says Fidas. “We are in reach of LGBT equality and a lot of businesses see this as standing on the right side of history.”
Perhaps more important, the patchwork of laws on marriage equality, and the uncertainty as to where the federal law stands, make it tough for businesses to recruit top talent. If a potential hire is already living with their family in a state like New York that permits gay marriage, and a company wants them to move to a state like Illinois that does not, the worker could be reluctant to take the job.
The federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) also causes problems for same-sex families. Under that law, a same-sex spouse’s insurance benefits are subject to federal tax, while a heterosexual spouse’s medical insurance benefits are not. DOMA also bars same-sex spouses from collecting social security survivor benefits.
Those policies led some 80 companies to sign on to an amicus brief in one of the legal challenges to DOMA in 2011. That contrasts with companies’ feeble response to California’s proposed gay-marriage ban four years ago, when only three companies, Google, Levi Strauss and PG&E, spoke out against the policy.
Also, leading up to this November’s election, companies including Nike EBay, General Mills, and Google, were active in the four states where marriage equality was on the ballot. In Washington, which voted to legalize gay marriage, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife personally gave $2.5 million to support the gay marriage measure, which wound up passing, as did initiatives in Maine and Maryland. In Minnesota, where voters weighed in on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, General Mills and Thomson Reuters opposed the measure, which lost.
Unlike discrimination based on race, gender, religion, national origin or disability, there is no federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Twenty-one states, including Texas, have no law against it. Also gay and bisexual people can still legally be denied a job or fired simply for their sexual orientation in 29 states, and for their gender identity in 34 states. Those policies and the slow rate of legislative change are among the chief motivations behind the CEI, according to Fidas.
“From our standpoint it’s been a truly exceptional year for corporate engagement and the fight for LGBT equality,” she says.
Susan Adams, Forbes Staff

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