Microsoft rejects charges it caved on gay rights

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. denied Friday that it had succumbed to pressure from a prominent evangelical minister in deciding not to lobby for a bill that would have broadened Washington state protections against discrimination to include gay men and lesbians.

The Stranger, an alternative weekly newspaper in Seattle, and The New York Times reported that Microsoft withdrew its support for the bill, which failed Thursday by one vote in the state Senate, after the Rev. Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond threatened in two recent meetings with Microsoft officials to engineer a national boycott of the software company’s products because of its past support for the measure.

The reports created an uproar among advocates for gay and lesbian rights and in the blogosphere, where Microsoft was portrayed as having abandoned its gay and lesbian employees. (MSNBC is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC News.)

“They threw us to the radical right dogs and now are risking every other company in America withdrawing its support for our civil rights legislation as well,” wrote “John in DC” on the widely read Americablog, while another writer, identified as “Angry Desi” wrote on The Minority Report: “Any way you look at it, Microsoft is leaving gays out in the cold.”

Microsoft has received numerous honors from gay and lesbian activist groups for its diversity initiatives. But Friday, the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, which presented Microsoft with its Corporate Vision Award four years ago, asked the company to return the award.

“Because of Microsoft’s apparent capitulation to the demands of anti-gay extremists and withdrawal of support for a bill that would do nothing more than protect gay and lesbian people from discrimination, we believe it’s no longer worthy of our highest corporate honor,” Darrell Cummings, the center’s chief of staff, said in a statement.

The Human Rights Campaign said in a letter to Microsoft that “the strong stance of Microsoft on behalf of the GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gendered] community and our partnership with the organization in the past makes this feel like even more of a betrayal.”

Workers affiliated with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Employees at Microsoft, or GLEAM, the oldest employees group at the corporation, did not respond to requests for comment. The New York Times reported that employees were reluctant to speak because they feared retribution for publicizing details of a contentious private meeting at which company executives discussed the legislation with members of GLEAM.

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