With Wal-Mart making the policy change, 9 of the 10 largest Fortune 500 companies now have rules barring discrimination against gay employees, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group in Washington, D.C., that monitors discrimination policies and laws.
The exception is the Exxon Mobil Corporation, which was created in 1999 after Exxon acquired Mobil, and then revoked a Mobil policy that provided medical benefits to partners of gay employees, as well as a policy that included sexual orientation as a category of prohibited discrimination.
Wal-Mart said it had no plans to extend medical benefits to unmarried couples, but gay rights groups that have pressed for coverage for domestic partners said they would continue to lobby the company to do so.
Among the Fortune 500 companies, 197 provide domestic partners with medical coverage, including several of the major airlines and the Big Three automakers, and 318 have antidiscrimination policies that extend protection to gay employees, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
With Wal-Mart now joining the ranks of companies with protections for gay employees, and in light of last week's Supreme Court ruling, gay rights groups said they expected many corporations, and possibly state governments, to follow suit.
It seems that this gay rights thing is not a new nor novel approach in the least.
Maybe that's why it's no longer in Breaking News.