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San Francisco -- and the tech industry -- are beaming with Pride this weekend.
The United States Supreme Court on Friday ruled same-sex marriage a constitutional right, one day before San Francisco begins its famous Pride festivities, one of the largest celebrations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender -- aka LGBT -- culture in the country. The tech industry is practically euphoric, especially after high-profile executives this year, from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, publicly advocated advancing gay rights. But that advancement works both ways, said Gary Virginia, board president of SF Pride, which organizes the celebration. Speaking out is not just a personal decision for tech execs; it makes good business sense too, he said.
"They attract a younger population for their workforce, and it's been proven that social attitudes are changing," said Virginia. "So it behooves them to have progressive policies to attract LGBT employees. I think they see the benefit of it."
The celebration caps off a landmark year for the gay rights movement. In September, Apple's Cook wrote an essay saying he's gay, making him the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. A month later, he allowed for his name to be attached to an LGBT anti-discrimination bill in his home state of Alabama. In March, Benioff said he had cancelled all Salesforce events in Indiana after its governor signed a law that would allow businesses to refuse service to anyone in the LGBT community on religious grounds. Less than a week later, dozens of executives from Airbnb, Ebay, Jawbone, Lyft, PayPal, Twitter and other companies signed a joint statement in The Washington Post against the religious freedom laws either passed or being considered in several states.
The tech industry is a relatively recent ally. LGBT leaders point out it's taken decades to achieve Friday's Supreme Court decision. New York City, for example, is commemorating the anniversary of the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn, which many consider the jump start of the movement. The 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, an openly gay San Francisco board supervisor, galvanized the national LGBT community.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 29 2015, @01:50PM
Rights only exist as a PR concept invented by the aristocracy because with industrialization and mass media it became cheaper to feed the masses a line of BS than to shoot them down in the street. Temporarily this worked pretty well. Like the scam of democracy where the one party selects two candidates and tells us we have a choice over who lies to us and does the opposite of their PR campaign. Anyone outside the aristocracy who tries to actually use "rights" will be destroyed of course. But the times they are a changin... and the relationship between the masses and "the system" seem more strained than ever in recent history. Gonna be fun to watch. Hope my family and I don't get guillotined.
A historical concept worth thinking about WRT "human rights" is there are professional agitator/victim organizations that are extremely butthurt that Irish and southern euros got rolled into "white" and they can't do their agit prop and divide and conqueror the Italians vs the stereotypical new england WASPs for example, at least not anymore, although it worked quite profitably a century ago. IF gay rights ever do go away and get rolled into human rights, theres going to be amazing butthurt by the community organizer crowd. Don't mess with someone's salary and expect them not to get pissed off about it. Even now, there's lots of people who's salary depended upon gay marriage agit prop who are very anxious and pissed off today... whos going to hire them to promote what?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @02:15PM
Hopefully all the feminists will be killed.
Even the pleasure of marrying a young girl has been stolen from us.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday June 29 2015, @04:17PM
Your eloquent argument has me convinced, mikeeusa! We need to get back to traditional marriage! None of this interracial crap or even waiting for sexual maturity! Consent?! Bah! Traditional marriage all the way!
/ducks
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @07:12PM
Yes. Real traditional marraige: that of a young girl (or girls) to a man, all the way.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @11:46PM
"Traditional marriage" is a contract for an exchange of property. Lets not go back to that.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 30 2015, @01:38AM
"Traditional marriage" is a contract for an exchange of property. Lets not go back to that.
I quite agree, just find a woman who hates you and give her your house. It saves a lot of time.