“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.
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