I received the item below from a reader who doesn't want credit,
so here it is as a guest commentary:
Does anyone still watch Showtime's Queer as Folk? Well, my partner and I do. One of the themes this (final) season is a statewide proposition that the friends are fighting. I guess it's to deny marriage rights, though they usually describe it as "it will take away all our rights."
I expect that kind of sloppiness, and the references to Nazis and "it's like Germany in the 1930s" are par for the course. But I was struck by the lawyer, Melanie, going door to door who said, "If we lose our rights, what's next? Old people will lose their Social Security?" A tenuous connection, I thought. And then it's been repeated two or three times that "some of the largest corporations are pouring millions into this." Melanie even emphasizes, "Not just rich conservatives, but corporations!"
That's the part that really gets my goat. Of course it's completely untrue (that is, it doesn't happen in real life). And I assume it just represents ignorance and kneejerk leftism on the part of the writers.
Actually, QAF (honored with a GLAAD media award for outstanding drama series) is so ludicrous on so many fronts that one becomes numb, but I sympathize with the reader. As I've noted previously, corporations have been at the forefront of advancing gay equality. According to an HRC report, 82% of Fortune 500 companies include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies and 43% offer domestic partner health benefits - numbers that go up every year.
Moreover, Microsoft's recent flip-flop and re-flip-flop on supporting the Washington state anti-discrimination bill (they were for it, then neutral when pressed by the religious right, then re-endorsed it when pressed by gays) shows the risks corporate America faces from even appearing not to take a stand, rather than being an active antagonist to gay equality.
Similarly, the one corporation that most invokes gay ire is Texas-based ExxonMobile, because it's the one big oil company that does not specify a gay nondiscrimination policy and doesn't offer partner benefits, and the old Mobile did before the merger (Exxon never did). ExxonMobile claims its general policies cover all kinds of discrimination, and that's debatable. But they're hardly funding anti-gay initiatives!
This
anti-gay site lists companies that support and oppose the
"homosexual agenda." The most "anti-gay" are guilty of not offering
diversity training, or rescinding partner benefits. Those are the
worst.