Wal-Mart Contributes $60,000 to Pro-Homosexual Employee Advocacy Group

According to an article published in the San Francisco Times on June 23, 2006, Wal-mart gave a $60,000 donation to Out & Equal, a pro-homosexual employee advocacy group.

Wal-Mart is a $60,000 plenary sponsor of September’s [2006] Out & Equal summit in Chicago. The company signed on to support the workplace advocacy group just two years after Ken Pearson, a Wal-Mart executive [and chairman of PRIDE, a group for Wal-Mart’s homosexual employees], attended his first summit and reported his findings to Bentonville.

Those close to the company and this sponsorship say it is not just a façade and reflects a growing commitment by Wal-Mart to ‘do the right thing.’

“I think the company, with it’s mission and focus on diversity, really wanted to make an impact, knowing that the support would be well-received within the LGBT community,” Pearson said. Wal-Mart “has been making great strides in moving the needle in LGBT workplace equality.”

Out & Equal executive director Selisse Berry sold Wal-Mart executives on Out & Equal in two days of meetings on LGBT issues in Bentonville last December.

“What struck me about that was that the culture at Wal-Mart is changing,” Berry said. “They were eager to learn and kind of catch up.”

Click HERE to view Wal-Mart endorsement ad for Out and Equal homosexual rights conference.

From the Out & Equal website:

Out & Equal™ Workplace Advocates is the pre-eminent national organization devoted to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the workplace.

Our mission is to educate and empower organizations, human resource professionals, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) and individual employees through programs and services that result in equal policies, opportunities, practices and benefits in the workplace regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, expressions or characteristics.

Click HERE to hear what Amy Andre of Out & Equal presented at the 2006 National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change conference last weekend.