Microsoft should be ashamed that they've caved to bigots:
The Microsoft Corporation, at the forefront of corporate gay rights for decades, is coming under fire from gay rights groups, politicians and its own employees for withdrawing its support for a state bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
..."Our government affairs team made a decision before this legislative session that we would focus our energy on a limited number of issues that are directly related to our business," said Mark Murray, a company spokesman. "That decision was not influenced by external factors. It was driven by our desire to focus on a smaller number of issues in this short legislative session. We obviously have not done a very good job of communicating about this issue."
...But State Representative Ed Murray, an openly gay Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said that in a conversation last month with Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, Mr. Smith made it clear to him that the company was under pressure from the church and the pastor and that he was also concerned about the reaction to company support of the bill among its Christian employees, the lawmaker said.
Microsoft shouldn't delude themselves. Dropping your support of a position isn't "neutral." The homophobic faction will now do two things: First, they're going to brag about how powerful they are to get one of the world's largest corporations to cave on an issue. Second, they're going to crow about how poor this legislation must be if Microsoft changed it's position. Any way you look at it, Microsoft is leaving gays out in the cold.
I can't believe that the company is so dickless that they would even cave in the first place. How serious can they take a boycott threat? Even if every Mac user in the world were to boycott Microsoft, we wouldn't make a dent in the company's profitability. Worse, we would simply end up isolating ourselves from the rest of the world. I mean, how do you get shit done without Microsoft? It's virtually impossible! What are conservative Christians going to do? Use Word Perfect? Give me a fucking break!
What's next? Is the company going to have to cave on hiring Arabs? After all, they might be terrorists. What about people who are pro-choice? Gotta get rid of them too. Musn't upset the right-wing religious wackos...
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