Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, has been helping former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney raise money for his presidential bid. (Queerty pointed me to the original New York Times article.) Romney, as many of you know, is actively opposed to same-sex marriage. Last October, he even spoke at a rally of the virulently homophobic Family Research Council. (Romney has shifted to the right on LGBT rights as well as other matters.)
Whitman’s support of Republicans is long-standing. I know, however, from various listservs and forums, that many LGBT parents are active, if not enthusiastic, users of eBay, hoping to save on baby and child paraphrenalia and offload it when outgrown. Will Whitman’s actions in support of a homophobic candidate for our country’s highest office change their minds?
It’s not as easy a question as it might appear. eBay itself offers benefits to employees’ domestic partners and has a written non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation. They haven’t gone all out with non-discrimination based on gender identity, or advertising to the LGBT community, but they’re not in the category of worst corporate offenders. One could also argue (though I have yet to see numbers on this) that the money LGBT people save and earn by buying and selling on eBay helps them actively support LGBT causes.
Furthermore, although eBay’s corporate Political Action Committee (PAC) gave almost twice as much to Republicans than Democrats at last counting, that amount plus Whitman’s personal contributions still don’t equal the greater amount contributed to the Democrats by the Chair of the company, Pierre Omidyar, and his wife Pamela.
eBay’s biggest competitor is Yahoo! Auctions. How do they compare? Yahoo! earned a respectable 90 out of 100 on the HRC Corporate Equality Index. Wait . . . Yahoo’s PAC contributions (corporate and individual) went 60% to Republicans and only 40% to Democrats. eBay’s corporate and individual PAC donations to Dems exceeded Yahoo’s by 75%. What about smaller auction sites like uBid.com and Bid-Alot.com? It’s hard to find information on their company policies, and they have neither the volume nor the range of features that make the industry leaders the sites of choice for so many. How much are we willing to sacrifice in terms of convenience and usability? That depends, I believe, on how bad we feel a company’s offenses are.
As I’ve written before, there is conflicting information about a company’s LGBT friendliness, even within the community. Bring in other factors like race, gender, and the environment, and the situation gets even more complicated.
Ultimately, we each have to decide what feels morally right for ourselves and our families. It’s worth taking the time, however, to go through the following steps when we question a company’s LGBT friendliness:
- Investigate a company as thoroughly as you can before acting. Sources of information include the HRC Corporate Equality Index, the Advocate’s Best Companies list, and the other diversity indices listed in my previous post.
- Review the political contributions of the company and its executives. BuyBlue.org and OpenSecrets.org are two good sources.
- Search online news sites and blogs for “[company name] and gay” (then try with “LGBT” and “GLBT”). See if there have been anti-LGBT incidents or rumors. Determine how credible the source is, and if there are conflicting opinions.
- If you feel a company is anti-LGBT in some way, decide on the appropriate course of action. Do you want to send them a letter, stop buying their products and services, go through your mutual fund prospectuses and sell off any funds that hold them, or start a major campaign against them, call the media and alert the blogosphere?
As LGBT parents, we have a dual responsibility here: to condemn the companies that uphold discrimination against our families, but also to teach our children the value of due diligence and a fair trial.
This may sound somewhat counterproductive to the cause, but my family has always felt the most subversive thing we can do as a lesbian household is to successfully raise our kids. The next generation will not stand for its parents to be treated as second class- and we will eventually win out over time.
If, in the meantime, I have to occasionally use the evil Wal*Mart for sales- or eBay to make some money for my family- so be it.
I don’t think that’s counterproductive at all. Part of what I was trying to say was that there are multiple factors that go into our buying decisions, and no simple answers. If you decide that the best thing is to raise your family, with a little help from Wal*Mart and eBay, that’s your right as a parent. Likewise, if you chose to shun them and spend your free time writing letters to their major shareholders, that’s your choice, too. What I object to are the folks who say there’s a one-size-fits-all answer. Our families are more varied than that.
This is why I’ve never been able to be a “single issue” voter or other decision maker.
There just aren’t a lot of “perfect” or “obvious” right answers or ways to do things in the world. At the same time, there often are “worse” choices and I, like many of us, prefer to spend my money in places that I think are socially responsible. So we have to craft functional compromises that make sense for our lives at the time.
Thanks for the collection of links to make finding “better answers” easier.
Thank you, Dana, for the thought and research you put into this! As ever, top notch work of great benefit to so many.