We can all safely assume that the religious right and the conservatives use issues such as Gay rights, same sex marriage and discrimination protections as wedge issues that can they can use for massive fundraising campaigns. Let’s face it, hate is a very lucrative business and these organizations are not about to let such a cash cow go so easily.

Now, I know there are a lot of members of the GLBTQ community that believe that HRC, G & L Task Force, etc… are above reproach, but…

If and when DADT, ENDA & DOMA are gone, the fact that the federal hate crimes bill has passed, the Mathew Shepard Bill passed, when there is equality in the USA for all it’s citizens, how are the above mentioned groups going to raise money?

There won’t be any need for them anymore, at least the way they are needed now.

I can’t but feel as if these groups have dragged their collective feet in order to keep these very important issues simmering. Dollar for dollar I think they make careless and amateurish mistakes, Prop 8 anyone?

I think there are a lot of other GLBTQ people who share my curiosity, but for fear of being labeled a traitor or worse a neo-con conspirator, haven’t voiced their opinions on this matter.

However, I just realized… We may have lost a battle, but we are slowly winning the war. It may not be coming as fast as we want, but the tide is slowly turning and soon it will turn in our direction.

Cheer up and know we are on the right side of this civil rights movement.

Unum started as a maine company, but is currently based in Tennessee after its merger with Provident Life and Accident Insurance Company.

“Of those I suspect the only two reasonable to gay people are the ones in Mass and UK.”

The corporate policies of both ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Both also offer domestic partner benefits to their gay employees, and both allow active gay social groups within the company to use company facilities to meet.

That’s pretty gay-inclusive by my standards.

For now.

(Wasn’t that the message at the end of “Avenue Q”! Do I get queen points for that reference? )

Yes. Harvey Milk was right. It all starts from this. It’s harder to hate a real person that you know than it is to hate “one of them.”

This is an example. Please don’t accuse companies simply by their presence. Next somebody’s gonna accuse IKEA of being antigay for being in Draper UT, Katy TX, and Woodbridge VA.

Unum: Primary operating offices
Columbia, S.C. — Colonial Life headquarters
Dorking, Surrey, U.K. — Unum UK division headquarters
Glendale, Calif.
Portland, Maine
Worcester, Mass.

Of those I suspect the only two reasonable to gay people are the ones in Mass and UK.

If, as was very clear in the pro-repeal messages on the major Maine newspapers, our dollars do not mean anything to them, well, fine, let’s not give them any.

Sunday River and Sugarloaf are two very very large ski resorts, formerly among flagships of ASC, yet no gay ski week. Interesting.

This is no different than the strategy used by nations against rogue states with extremist religious extremists using oppression to control a minority.

And if they are as corporations pro-LGBT (which tbh I only find support for that with Hannaford) and are among state’s largest employers i.e. largest tax base, then that’s influence. I’m sorry, that’s common sense.

@TheMaineReason
Obama has done almost nothing for LGBT community. Why expect it now? He did not come out to support on Q 1 and DNC did not even mention it in their mailers. We’re on our own.

We can either sit by and keep saying ‘we can wait another year’ and another Prop 8 to Prop 1 when most likely NJ and NY are already in trouble if not serious trouble or show them we can stand up.
-doug

(1) We’re psychologically battering our community. Thirty-one (!) gay marriage ballot measures have gone against us. Forget about Arizona – there are same-sex couples in relatively progressive states who were set up to get their hopes up, only to have it all yanked away from them. In some cases, even previously-enacted domestic partnership laws were left in question by marriage ballot beheadings. We must stop setting people up to be devastated!

(2) We spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defend marriage rights passed in court or legislature in progressive states, while same-sex couples in Alabama, Mississippi, or Idaho, have absolutely no protections for their relationships. That money could be better spent procuring domestic partnership rights for people in more conservative areas. Polling shows that most Americans, even in conservative places, support domestic partnership protections.

(3) In places where there are no protections for same-sex relationships, the poor, women, and people of color are disproportionately affected. Rich and middle-class gays can afford the lawyers to craft the legally-sound wills and directives that ensure that one partner will make medical decisions for the other, or that either will have inheritance rights, or that their joint raising of a child will not be invalidated in courts. I know, because I hired a lawyer and did a will protecting my partner and me; and I recently left a southern state where not doing so would have been begging for trouble. Low-income gays can’t do this. So a same-sex couple in Selma, North Carolina, who have no DP protections and no money, is left to the dogs. To the extent that a greater percentage of lesbian couples, or same-sex households of color, are lower-income than their white gay male counterparts, having no rights at all is far more damaging to them. This isn’t to say that denial of marriage isn’t damaging to everyone, even to middle-class or rich gays, but it does say that not having even domestic partnership rights is absolutely devastating to same-sex couples. California and Maine both had domestic partnership protections before their marriage initiatives. Same-sex couples in many areas of Utah or Louisiana have nothing.

(4) It has become clear that a far more likely scenario than winning gay marriage state-by-state, is winning domestic partnerships on a federal, national level. The Obama administration, as well as the Congress and Senate, are poised to do it. For me (and my conscience, and my money) giving same-sex couples in Tennessee even basic legal recognition of their relationships is far more valuable than upgrading a couple’s status in Maine from domestic partnership to marriage.

(5) Getting national domestic partnership rights for couples might increase the numbers of straights who “get it” that gay couples deserve equal rights.

(6) Putting gay marriage on a state ballot makes our gay brothers and sisters in that state wonder who voted against them. Was it family? Neighbors? Friends? This isn’t bringing people together. This is causing suspicion, bitterness, and hurt. Bringing people together is probably the only way we’re going to eventually convince straights that we deserve equality under the law. Telling our personal stories works much better than forcing people to make choices along philosophical lines.

(7) Continuing the same-sex marriage “smack-down” is just emboldening our bigoted foes who will now think they can use their inhumane, despicable tactics in the remaining 19 states in the union.

(8) It took some 160 years between the first state striking down interracial marriage bans, to the Virginia v. Loving 1967 Supreme court decision striking down all such bans. Gay marriage is inevitable – and certainly in much less time than 160 years. But there has to be a more intelligent strategy than battering people psychologically in progressive states while denying people much needed resources and protection in conservative states.

Larger businesses tend to favor rights for LGBT people. The people who voted against marriage equality are mostly in rural areas of the state and are likely not working for larger employers.

@randy:
Striking down DOMA would not expand the sphere of marriage equality, it would only expand the scope. Were DOMA repealed or struck down, the people legally married in states where same-sex marriage is legal would then be able to get the Federal benefits as well. The people who live in states where same-sex marriage is not legal would still not be able to get married.