“Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, who made headlines in October when he publicly acknowledged being gay, is lending his name to legislation to bar discrimination against state employees on the basis of their sexual orientation in his native Alabama,” Sherrel Wheeler Stewart and Christina Farr report for Reuters.
“Democratic state Representative Patricia Todd, Alabama’s sole openly gay lawmaker, said on Wednesday that Apple was initially hesitant about having Cook’s name on her bill, which faces steep odds in the Republican-dominated Legislature, but later embraced the idea,” Stewart and Farr report. “Cook came out days after accepting an Alabama Academy of Honor award in a speech critical of the socially conservative state’s lack of progress on rights for gay people. ‘Nobody could have scripted this,’ said Todd, who plans to introduce her bill in the Alabama legislative session beginning in March. ‘I never in a million years would have expected it.'”
“Todd said she was initially speaking in jest about using Cook’s name, but her comments were published and came to the attention of Apple. Todd said she received a call early last month from a company official who expressed concern over Cook’s name being attached to such a politically sensitive measure,” Stewart and Farr report. “Todd said she told the official she would not name the bill after Cook. But after that conversation was reported by BuzzFeed earlier this week, Todd received a call from the company’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell, who told her Cook would be delighted to have the bill named after him, she said.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Russian memorial to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dismantled after CEO Tim Cook announces he’s gay – November 3, 2014
Apple investors don’t care that Tim Cook is gay – October 31, 2014\
Goldman Sachs CEO: Apple’s Tim Cook coming out as gay ‘will resonate powerfully’ – October 31, 2014
Human Rights Campaign: Tim Cook’s announcement that he is gay will save countless lives – October 30, 2014
Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me’ – October 30, 2014
Apple joins Gay Pride parade in Austin, Texas – September 21, 2014
Apple releases video highlighting employee participation in San Francisco’s LGBT Pride Parade – July 8, 2014
Tim Cook, Apple employees march in LGBT Pride Parade in San Francisco – June 30, 2014
Apple inviting employees to march in annual San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade – May 7, 2014
I’m getting tired of all this history. Apple is a technology company. Tim Cook is a good CEO, not a prophet. And the world is full of discrimination of all kinds on which neither Apple nor Tim have expressed their opinion.
If I may say, with all respect, I believe your response is the new face of homophobia.
And beyond that, your take doesn’t comport with the facts of the matter. In this case, Apple’s GC on time Tim Cook’s behalf was responding to something that the Alabama Democrat had said. He didn’t go out of his way to push for the bill or even to suggest that his name be attached to it.
And beyond that, were it that Tim Cook were just some guy, his coming out would have been momentous personally, but not national news. That fact that the CEO of the largest US corporation by market cap (probably by any measure) came out is indeed a *very, very* big deal. No other current CEO of a Fortune 500 company has (had the courage to) come out even though it is very clear that many of them are gay. One other CEO did come out but only after he had retired.
I’m assuming the only way this bill has a chance in Alabama’s Republican-dominated Legislature is if it receives national attention.
When the GOP had a gay RNC Chair (Ken Mehlman) he was officially in the closet although widely known to be gay. David Drier- A Congressman from California- was passed over for GOP Majority Leader due to his openly living with his Chief of Staff in D.C. despite officially being in the closet.
These incidents were in the last decade- not the last century.
I don’t know Tim’s story, and in a way it is fitting since he is from Alabama, HOWEVER, he also came out post-Stonewall. Given the anti-gay sentiments below the Mason-Dixon line, maybe the bill should be named after Alan Turing… and every legislator should be required to watch the new movie ENIGMA before even considering the bill. They’d be speaking German with a southern drawl, if it weren’t for Alan Turing.
I don’t know Suburban Hermit, Alan Turing was British and everyone pretty well knows how Americans react to anything that’s not American.
Yeh. Didn’t they even rewrite the whole Enigma story for that movie a few years ago to feature the good ol’ US of A?
Notice in an assembly full of Republicans it took a Democrat to do the right thing.
There is a lesson there. Progress comes from the left and repression always comes from the right.
Apple has long been a GLBT friendly employer from far before it was widely accepted even on the Left coast and it is long past time the law protects GLBT people. As a shareholder and customer, Apple is doing the right thing.
as a 1) bisexual 2) shareholder and 3) customer i say Apple has been an early adopter of doing the right thing in regards to a lot of areas when it comes to protecting people and the environment, and so i will continue to be all three
“There is a lesson there. Progress comes from the left and repression always comes from the right.”
With due respect, I don’t agree. The left concerns itself with base, hedonistic and animalistic human traits: sex, money, pleasure, and immediate gratification, often at someone else’s expense. There’s little respect for religion, or spirituality. Example would be the cross at 9/11 which liberal athiests are trying to have ripped out. Atheists don’t have any attachment to that cross, and it means nothing to them, but it means a lot to many Christians who lost loved ones on that day.
On the topic of gay discrimination, liberals have no problem forcing people to participate in gay weddings and ceremonies even if they have a cultural or religious issue with it. Discrimination against gays is “homophobia” and even has its own label, but discrimination against people who have religious views that oppose gay marriage is perfectly fine. So the left gets to pick and to choose who can be discriminated against. Racism only exists against blacks and illigal latino immigrants, never against whites and rarely against Asians. White privilage has even been invented to make bigotry towards whites an acceptable national sport. Abortion is another area where the left has staked their side with “choice” over unborn human lives. This is all in the name of immediate gratification, hedonism, and pure self-indulgence.
If someone is gay, great be gay. In my view it does not define you, it’s only one aspect of who you are as a human being. It’s not an identity, any more than heterosexuality is my identity. The left making a political movement out of stamping out discrimination against gays, while approving of “acceptable” forms of bigotry and discrimination is purely self indulgent hypocrisy.
Religion has no place in politics as it is by it’s very nature divisive, intolerant and repressive. Many of our founders were Deists and others Unitarians- both far from anything an Orthodox, Catholic or Evangelical Christian would accept as a Christian. America is not and never has been a Christian nation- the Treaty of Tripoli negotiated, ratified and signed by alumni founders of our nation expressly says so.
As to the charge that people are forced to participate in same sex weddings, that is something that does not exist. If you are referring to someone who wanted to deny service to a gay couple based upon their sexual orientation – that is simply discrimination and is no different than someone denying service based upon race or ethnicity.
In the end, marriage equality and ending discrimination against GLBT people is about doing the right thing. In a Christian context it is about the Golden Rule- do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Take it from an agnostic who was raised in the church.
Stop with politics Apple should just focus on business. I’m sick of all the gay stuff shoved down my throat. Enough with the activists. If it were Tim and apple pushing Christianity they would be ripped apart or called all sorts of names by so called opened minded liberals that preach that we have to accept everyone and not be a “hater”
i would have no problem with apple saying they protected christians to be safe in their lives, jobs, and dignity, and able to be open about it (i believe they do, by the way, in case you missed the difference….)
Christians are indeed open about their spirituality, but this is not the point reec is making, eMo. If Apple were as outspoken about their spiritual beliefs to the level they speak out concerning GLBT issues (ie, ChicFilA or Hobby Lobby), Apple ‘would be ripped apart and called all sorts of names by so called open minded liberals that preach that we have to accept everyone and not be a “hater.” ‘
Reec, that’s because religious belief is a choice whereas sexuality is an innate part of your being. People should not be discriminated against for their skin colour, gender, disability of sexual orientation. And Apple has always been a rather political company and this is simply about extending the same protections to people in Alabama that Apple itself has provided to its own employees for many, many years.
People are born gay and are not born with a religion. Religion is imposed upon children by folkways, social norms, peer pressure and indoctrination. There is no equivalence.
Apple has an obligation to treat employees fairly and an interest in seeing them protected under the law. In Alabama a person can be fired from their job for simply being openly gay- something common to many states as there is no legal protection for them. This bill is an attempt to enter that into the laws of Alabama.
As Apple has employees within the state of Alabama, they have an interest in the equality of their employees as no legal protection for GLBT could impact recruitment, retention and the well being of employees. It is an HR issue.
Apple is a globe spanning company with the global clout. Everything it does is political.
If Tim Cook and Apple were pushing Christianity it would be because they were intent on disenfranchising someone. Only a moron can pretend to not know that equality is essential to a functional democracy with equal rights for all members of society being good for the country and good for the economy.
I love the irony! Leftist Dems pushing the prominence of a man worth easily half a billion bucks while deriding the rich and claiming to be the party of the poor and all for a man coming out of a closet he was never in while their dear leader refuses to come out of his closet. I’m telling ya’, you can’t make this shit up!
You should stop creating arguments. Leftists are not against wealth nor the wealthy. They (or maybe I should say We) are against the wealthy abusing their wealth to the detriment of others not in the same position. Such as done by the Koch Brothers, for instance, who can afford all the soap in the world yet still look and smell dirty.
Next we will be seeing an new “prod”-duct from Apple called the iSodom, only the logo will be the opposite of horizontal so you can know what the “i’ is. And it will be a long “i” and not a short “i”.
It is a well-known fact that all previous successful civilizations in this world were destroyed by the same thing and that is why Sodomy was outlawed and the practitioners were put to death.
History repeats itself. This civilization is going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Don’t worry, be happy.
It’s a well-known fact that pretending that your book Bronze Age book of scary bedtime stories has any meaningful information in regards to a functional civilization is delusional.