Microsoft, Starbucks among 70 major organizations to join suit AGAINST DOMA (shopping season alert!)

Seattle Times ^ | November 4, 2011 | Janet I. Tu

[NYer]

Microsoft and Starbucks are among 70 corporations, financial institutions, medical centers, and other major organizations that have signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The organizations are, or represent, major employers who argue that DOMA imposes significant administrative costs, and that it harms their ability to attract and retain talent.

"Microsoft has joined dozens of corporations, organizations and governments in support of a challenge on constitutionality grounds to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA," the company said in a statement. The amicus brief "points out the significant costs and administrative burdens DOMA imposes on employers as well as the ways DOMA interferes with employers' efforts to promote diversity and equal opportunity in the workplace."

The organizations -- which also include Google, CBS, Time Warner Cable, Nike, and the cities of Boston, Cambridge and New York -- filed the brief Thursday in the case of Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of two consolidated cases from Massachusetts challenging the constitutionality of DOMA.

DOMA, passed by Congress in 1996, defines marriage as between one man and one woman. It bars the federal government from treating same-sex marriages as legal or granting gay couples federal benefits. That means, for instance, that same-sex couples who married in states such as Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, aren't eligible for the benefits that come with federally recognized marriage, such as filing joint federal tax returns or Social Security and immigration-law benefits.

There are about a dozen cases around the country challenging DOMA.

[NYer]

The consolidated Massachusetts cases, currently before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, are the first to reach the federal appellate level, just one step down from the U.S. Supreme Court, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

Here is the Amicus Brief listing the corporations, et al.

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE 70 BUSINESS, PROFESSIONAL AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYERS, AND PROFESSIONAL, TRADE, AND CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS REPRESENTING EMPLOYERS IN SUPPORT OF APPELLEES AND IN SUPPORT OF AFFIRMANCE OF THE JUDGMENT BELOW

[NYer]

As we enter the Christmas shopping season, you may want to visit the above link while compiling the list of stores you plan to visit.

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[wagglebee]

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[NYer]

Included in the list is:

The City of New York, NY

[FlingWingFlyer]

Time to knock off this DOMA bull****. It’s the DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT! One man. One woman. Not two sexual deviants or a freak and his goat.

[dennisw]

Even though Apple markets to the gay community they are not on this list while Microsoft is. The list in favor of destroying DOMA

[goodnesswins]

"But "DOMA forces amici to investigate the gender of the spouses of our lawfully married employees and then to single out those employees with a same-sex spouse. DOMA enforces discriminatory tax treatment of spousal health care benefits."

[GeronL]

Good boycott list.

[heartwood]

How does DOMA impose costs on companies, or keep them from recruiting talent? If they want to offer benefits to partners, what’s stopping them? State laws regulate the health insurance.

My MIL’s gay hairdresser went out of business, lost his shop, because San Francisco imposed insurance coverage requirements on him - he couldn’t afford to pay insurance for men with AIDS.

Maybe huge companies like Microsoft and Time Warner can afford it; small businesses can’t.

[Happy Rain]

Sort of tells you how wide spread the intimidation of the radical Homosexual agenda is.

It never ceases to amaze me how a group of people who only have a neurotic desire for unnatural sex in common can become so powerful.

I mean,what's to stop an organization comprised of booger eaters to demand special privileges—their behavior is almost as disgusting.

[FrdmLvr]

Thanks for posting the complete list. This one will be easy because there are relatively few companies I would purchase from anyway, mainly Levis, Nike, New Balance, even Scorchbucks (which I avoid because their coffee sucks, except that my daughter likes to go there, but now I will refuse).

[Mr. K]

I think we all need to start writing to Mickeysoft and telling them we don’t appreciate MSNBC and their propoganda and all the other libtard positions they take.

I may be stuck with wondows operating system (linux users: SHUT UP~!SHUT UP~!SHUT UP~!) But I dont have to buY x box of mickeysoft software any more

There are FREE alternatives and I am pretty certain I could convince my company they could save 10’s of thousands of dollars on open office

[Sun]

I’ll boycott them.

[rarestia]

Apple and Micro$loth are not the only games in town. I run Linux on numerous machines with no issues whatsoever.

This is sad. I am increasingly disheartened by the world around me.

[adorno]

you may want to visit the above link while compiling the list of stores you plan to visit.

Except that, how do you go about boycotting Microsoft and their products? Don't purchase from the stores that offer their products? Or, don't purchase from the stores that use their products? Or, perhaps, switch to other OSes, and software not related to Microsoft? Perhaps, even Linux? Hmmm... perhaps it's time to organize behind Linux and "free" and open source, and hit Microsoft where it hurts?

[BenKenobi]

I’m a fan of MS and I will be using alternatives, like Open office.

However, when the browser options are even worse (google, just as much in the tank. FF, big and bloated), I’m not really sure there’s a good alternative to IE that isn’t even more in gay agenda tank than Microsoft.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The programmers in the middle of Linux/FOSS are probably as gay happy as anybody, but they don’t have some huge high profile company to push the agenda with. (Just curious how Ubuntu, Inc. aka Canonical addresses the matter. Being South African they may be able to skirt the issue.)

It’s sickening that the sads have thoroughly hijacked Microsoft. Microsoft was supposedly the epitome of US high (okay, medium) tech success, with the vast majority of US businesses being their customer in some manner.

[DJ MacWoW]

They Have Plans For America

America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. - Joseph Stalin

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[HiTech RedNeck]

To be fair to Google, they were founded by screaming liberals. They weren’t hijacked by gays. Gays were invited aboard from the word go. With Google it really is WYSIWYG.

Microsoft with its stodgier business image seems more of a sacrilege for having gone to the, er, “dogs.”

[steve86]

FF, big and bloated

Interesting that "big and bloated" Firefox 7.01 runs just fine on my antique Celeron 400 laptop with 256 mb. About 110 meg free after starting FF.