Posted on 05/07/2005 11:35:10 AM PDT by murphE
In a turnaround Friday, Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer said the company will support gay rights legislation.
Ballmer made the announcement in an e-mail to employees two weeks after gay rights activists accused the company of withdrawing its support for an anti-discrimination bill in its home state after an evangelical pastor threatened to launch a national boycott. The bill died by a single vote in the state Senate in late April.
"After looking at the question from all sides, I've concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda," Ballmer wrote.
The bill that failed in the state Legislature would have banned discrimination against gays in housing, employment and insurance. Microsoft had supported the measure in the past, but more recently took a neutral stance.
Critics of Microsoft called it a corporate coward, and a major gay rights group, the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles, asked the company to return a civil rights award it had bestowed on Microsoft four years ago. The group withdrew its demand after Ballmer's turnaround.
Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group, said Microsoft "did the right thing and has come down squarely on the side of fairness for all employees."
Late last month, Ballmer said the company had decided to take a neutral stance on the bill and focus instead on a shorter list of legislative priorities that had a more direct impact on the company's software business.
He said that decision was made well before executives met with the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of a Redmond church who has organized anti-gay-marriage rallies.
The voice mail Friday at Hutcherson's church did not allow for messages, and a call to an emergency assistance number went unanswered. There is no listing for his home.
I try to avoid MS product whenever I can, although sometimes I don't have much of a choice.
If only I knew how to get rid of Windows altogether, now I have another good reason to.
I know a guy who uses Linux OS. He says it works great. The only objection I've heard about it is that it's more convenient to use a Windows OS because finding the right software is less of a problem. What do you know about alternatives to Microsoft products?
It isn't really a matter of "special rights" for homosexuals. The "special rights" belong to society.
Nit picking over special rights for particular groups might be what we're left to deal with, but in an ideal world, homosexuals should not have any rights to begin with, except a few basic ones. They should not be allowed to adopt children, nor to vote, nor to hold public office, nor to have health insurance except with a policy that's only for homosexuals. The general population should not have to share the cost of diseases, like AIDS, that would not be widespread if not for homosexual behavior. Homosexuality, per se, should not be a "socially acceptable lifestyle." These are practical, temporal concerns, but not unimportant ones.
Beyond that, the moral depravity they exhibit is only good for one thing: the destruction of society. Their sin is one that cries to heaven for vengeance, and toleration of their sin makes those who tolerate it guilty of complicity, which begs heaven's vengeance just the same as the sin itself does. Just as it is proper to have capital punishment for society to protect itself against the contagion of chronic habitual capital criminals, society should protect itself from the inevitable decline into self-annihilation that the toleration of homosexual behavior entails. It is a matter of self-preservation that society is rightly empowered to disallow such rights to an entire group whose continued existence in itself is a threat to the existence of society.
This might sound harsh, but if not for such laws in the not-so-distant past, we would not have society today. We would have anarchy, if anything. Treatment of homosexuals with due restrictions is what kept us out of the anarchy that we are getting closer and closer to, as it is, all the time now.
The "special rights" are properly for society at large, not for any particular group. But as with so many other things, we have it all backwards.
Well I tried to use Linux about five years ago and never could figure out how to get it to work even halfway good. I hear it is much improved.
I guess it depends on what you use your computer for. If you just use it for internet browsing and office apps you can probably bypass Windows.
There is a really good office app for free called OpenOffice, available at openoffice.org. I have been using it for almost a year now and it is rapidly improving. It has a word processor, spreedsheet, presentation, and they just added a database program (but that one has some bugs still). But all in all it comes very close to MS Office and is 100% free.
Nationwide boycott of Microsoft
That's funny (in a bad way). My dear evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ are, by and large, completely in thrall to Microsoft, and can't even imagine an alternative.
I know a guy who uses Linux OS. He says it works great. The only objection I've heard about it is that it's more convenient to use a Windows OS because finding the right software is less of a problem. What do you know about alternatives to Microsoft products?
There're good alternatives to most everything except tax software. If games are a show-stopper for you, you need to get a life.
The way you work with Linux is different, and (unlike Windows) you can't be a complete fool and use Linux.
Dennis Prager, Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality
Nothing.
Thanks for the thread murphE. I'm going with Apple hardware, my next go-round.
One man's ideal, is another man's hell.
Very interesting information, especially in light of the Microsoft association with immorality.
I tried a telephone company, Sienna Communications, about a year ago and they worked out pretty well. Now they have cell phones too. Their main plug is "cut the lines to sin." They donate a portion of your monthly phone bill to a charity of your choice, and most people name their local church. Here's the link:
http://www.sienna-group.com/whyus.html
I wonder if they are answering this Microsoft problem?
Not enough explanation. What are you saying? Please be more specific and less ambiguous. Ambiguity smacks of political equivocation.
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