Gay Group Asks Microsoft To Hand Back Their Award

The rumblings from Microsoft’s decision to drop support for an anti-discrimination bill in the state of Washington continue. Now the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, which four years ago presented Microsoft with an award for its progressive stance on diversity issues, has asked Microsoft to hand the award back.

In addition, the Human Rights Campaign has sent a letter to Steve Ballmer (Microsoft’s CEO) expressing their profound disappointment over Microsoft’s decision.

Apparently, Ballmer has issued an internal memo to all employees putting his side of the case, but this has not been made public outside of the company. What Microsoft has said publicly, has come through their PR people. Tami Begasse, a senior corporate spokeswoman for Microsoft, said yesterday that the company’s stances on diversity and nondiscrimination had not changed and noted that Microsoft issued a letter in support of the Washington legislation, which has been introduced annually for many years, as recently as the last session.

However, the simple fact of the matter is that Microsoft has indeed switched its position on the bill from one of "support" to one of "neutrality".

Begasse said Microsoft’s government relations specialists chose to focus their legislative efforts this year on more central priorities “that have a direct impact on our industry and our business,” specifically computer privacy, education, competitiveness and transportation.

What I find most dismaying about the whole affair is that Microsoft management appears not to have had the nous  to realise that any change of position on such a sensitive issue would have major reverberations. I mean, d-uuh!  John Aravosis over on AMERICAblog makes the same point with somewhat more colour, but then, I’m just a diplomatic brit.