Americans For Truth » IBM (EAGLE)

HRC’s 195 100-Percent Pro-Homosexual Corporations

Peterlab — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:33:01 +0000

Coca-Cola and Best Buy have been on HRC’s 100-percent Pro-Homosexual Corporations list for two and four years, respectively. Coke’s competitor PepsiCo has been on the HRC list for four years. McDonald’s scores an 85% on the “gay” group’s survey. Click HERE to learn about the HRC’s criteria for ranking companies.

In 2008, the following 195 ‘Fortune 1,000′ corporations received a perfect 100-percent score from the pro-homosexual lobby group Human Rights Campaign (HRC), in its “2008 Corporate Equality Index.” Click on AFTAH”s story on McDonald’s 85-percent score — to learn about the pro-”gay” criteria for HRC’s “Corporate Equality Index.” The number next to each corporation’s name and headquarters city indicates how many years that company has received a 100% HRC ranking. (First-year 100% corporations are in bold.) Source: HRC’s 2008 Corporate Equality Index.

_____________________________

AAA Northern California, Nevada and Utah San Francisco, CA 3
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. New Albany, OH 2
Accenture Ltd. New York, NY 1
Adobe Systems Inc. San Jose, CA 2
Aetna Inc. Hartford, CT 6
Agilent Technologies Inc. Santa Clara , CA 4
Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP Washington, DC 1
Alcatel-Lucent Murray Hill, NJ
Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America Minneapolis, MN 2
Allstate Corp., The Northbrook, IL 1
Alston & Bird LLP Atlanta, GA 3
American Express Co. New York, NY 4
Ameriprise Financial Inc. Minneapolis, MN 2
AMR Corp. (American Airlines) Fort Worth, TX 6
Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. St. Louis, MO 2
Aon Corp. Chicago, IL 1
Apple Inc. Cupertino, CA 6
Arnold & Porter LLP Washington, DC 2
AT&T Inc. San Antonio, TX 3

Bain & Co. Inc. Boston, MA 2
Bank of America Corp. Charlotte, NC 2
Bausch & Lomb Inc. Rochester, NY 5
Bear Stearns Companies Inc., The New York, NY 1
Best Buy Co. Inc. Richfield, MN 4
Bingham McCutchen Boston, MA 1
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. Ridgefield, CT 1
Boeing Co. Chicago, IL 2
Borders Group Inc. Ann Arbor, MI 3
Boston Consulting Group Boston, MA 1
BP America Inc. Warrenville, IL 3
Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. Watertown, MA 2
Brinker International Inc. Dallas, TX 2
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. New York, NY 2
Bryan Cave LLP St. Louis, MO 1

Capital One Financial Corp. McLean, VA 5
Cargill Inc. Wayzata, MN 4
Carlson Companies Inc. Minnetonka, MN 2
Charles Schwab Corp., The San Francisco, CA 4
Chevron Corp. San Ramon, CA 3
ChoicePoint Inc. Alpharetta, GA 4
Chrysler LLC Auburn Hills, MI 3
Chubb Corp. Warren, NJ 4
Cisco Systems Inc. San Jose, CA 4
Citigroup Inc. New York, NY 4
Clear Channel Communications Inc. San Antonio, TX 2
Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton New York, NY 1
Clorox Co. Oakland, CA 2
CMP Media LLC Manhasset, NY 3
CNA Insurance Chicago, IL 2
Coca-Cola Co., The Atlanta, GA 2
Coors Brewing Co. Denver, CO 4
Corning Inc. Corning, NY 3
Countrywide Financial Corp. Calabasas, CA 1
Credit Suisse New York, NY 3
Crowell & Moring LLP Washington, DC 1
Cummins Inc. Columbus, IN 3

Dell Inc. Round Rock, TX 4
Deloitte & Touche USA LLP New York, NY 2
Deutsche Bank New York, NY 5
Dewey Ballantine LLP New York, NY 1
Dickstein Shapiro LLP Washington, DC 1
Dorsey & Whitney LLP Minneapolis, MN 2
Dow Chemical Co. Midland, MI 3
DuPont (E.I. du Pont de Nemours) Wilmington, DE 2

Eastman Kodak Co. Rochester, NY 6
Electronic Arts Inc. Redwood City, CA 1
Eli Lilly & Co. Indianapolis, IN 2
Ernst & Young LLP New York, NY 3
Estee Lauder Companies New York, NY 3
Esurance Inc. San Francisco, CA 1

Faegre & Benson Minneapolis, MN 4
Fannie Mae Washington, DC 2
Foley & Lardner Milwaukee, WI 1
Foley Hoag LLP Boston, MA 1
Ford Motor Co. Dearborn, MI 4
Freescale Semiconductor Inc. Austin, TX 3

GameStop Corp. Grapevine, TX 1
Gap Inc. San Francisco, CA 3
Genentech Inc. South San Francisco, CA 1
General Mills Inc. Minneapolis, MN 3
General Motors Corp. Detroit, MI 2
GlaxoSmithKline plc Philadelphia, PA 3
Global Hyatt Corp. Chicago, IL 3
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., The New York, NY 4
Google Inc. Mountain View, CA 2

Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. Las Vegas, NV 1
Hartford Financial Services Co. Hartford, CT 1
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc. Wellesley, MA 2
Heller Ehrman LLP San Francisco, CA 2
Herman Miller Inc. Zeeland, MI 1
Hewitt Associates Lincolnshire, IL 2
Hewlett-Packard Co. Palo Alto, CA 5
Holland & Knight LLP New York, NY 1
Honeywell International Inc. Morristown, NJ 2
Hospira Inc. Lake Forest, IL 2
HSBC USA Inc. Prospect Heights, IL 1

IndyMac Bancorp Inc. Pasadena, CA 1
ING North America Insurance Corp. Atlanta, GA 2
Intel Corp. Santa Clara, CA 6
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Armonk, NY 5
Intuit Inc. Mountain View, CA 3

J.C. Penney Co. Inc. Plano, TX 1
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. New York, NY 6
Jenner & Block LLP Chicago, IL 3
Johnson & Johnson New Brunswick, NJ 3

Kaiser Permanente Oakland, CA 3
KeyCorp Cleveland, OH 1
Keyspan Corp Brooklyn, NY 4
Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group Inc. San Francisco, CA 4
Kirkland & Ellis Chicago, IL 1
KPMG LLP New York, NY 3
Kraft Foods Inc. Northfield, IL 4
Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP New York, NY 1

Latham & Watkins LLP New York, NY 1
Lehman Brothers Holdings New York, NY 5
Levi Strauss & Co. San Francisco, CA 5
Lexmark International Inc. Lexington, KY 3
Liz Claiborne Inc. New York, NY 2

Macy’s Inc. Cincinnati, OH 1
Marriott International Inc. Washington, DC 1
Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. Springfield, MA 1
MasterCard Inc. Purchase, NY 1
McDermott Will & Emery LLP Chicago, IL 2
McKinsey & Co. Inc. New York, MA 2
Mellon Financial Corp. Pittsburgh, PA 3
Merck & Co. Inc. Whitehouse Station, NJ 2
Merrill Lynch & Co. New York, NY 3
MetLife Inc. New York, NY 5
Microsoft Corp. Redmond, WA 3
Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo Boston, MA 1
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Taylorsville, NC 5
Morgan Stanley New York, NY 2
Morrison & Foerster LLP San Francisco, CA 5
Motorola Inc. Schaumburg, IL 4

National Grid USA Westborough, MA 1
Nationwide Columbus, OH 4
NCR Corp. Dayton, OH 6
New York Times Co. New York, NY 4
Newell Rubbermaid Inc. Atlanta, GA 1
Nike Inc. Beaverton, OR 6
Nixon Peabody LLP Rochester, NY 2
Nordstrom Inc. Seattle, WA 3
Northern Trust Corp. Chicago, IL 2
Northrop Grumman Corp. Los Angeles, CA 2

O’Melveny & Myers LLP Los Angeles, CA 1
Oracle Corp. Redwood Shores, CA 1
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe San Francisco, CA 2

Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP Los Angeles, CA 1
PepsiCo Inc. Purchase, NY 4
Pfizer Inc. New York, NY 4
PG&E Corp. San Francisco, CA 5
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP San Francisco, CA 2
Powell Goldstein LLP Atlanta, GA 2
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP New York, NY 2
Principal Financial Group Des Moines, IA 1
Prudential Financial Inc. Newark, NJ 5

Raytheon Co. Waltham, MA 3
Recreational Equipment Inc. Kent, WA 1
Replacements Ltd. McLeansville, NC 6

S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. Racine, WI 5
Schering-Plough Corp. Kenilworth, NJ 2
Sears Holdings Corp. Hoffman Estates, IL 3
Sidley Austin LLP Chicago, IL 1
Sodexho Inc. Gaithersburg, MD 1
Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal Chicago, IL 1
Sprint Nextel Corp Reston, VA 3
Starbucks Corp. Seattle, WA 1
Starcom MediaVest Group Chicago, IL 2
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide White Plains, NY 2
State Street Corp. Boston, MA 2
Subaru of America Inc. Cherry Hill, NJ 1
Sun Microsystems Inc. Santa Clara, CA 3
SunTrust Banks Inc. Atlanta, GA 3
Supervalu Inc. Eden Prairie, MN 1

Tech Data Corp. Clearwater, FL 3
Time Warner Inc. New York, NY 1
Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. Torrance, CA 2
Travelport Inc. Parsippany, NJ 1

U.S. Bancorp Minneapolis, MN 1
UBS AG Stamford, CT 3
United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) Atlanta, GA 1
US Airways Group Inc. Tempe, AZ 3

Viacom Inc. New York, NY 3
Visa Foster City, CA 2
Volkswagen of America Inc. Auburn Hills, MI 2

Wachovia Corp. Charlotte, NC 2
Walgreens Co. Deerfield, IL 3
Walt Disney Co. Burbank, CA 2
Washington Mutual Inc. Seattle, WA 2
Waste Management Inc. Houston, TX 1
Wells Fargo & Co. San Francisco, CA 4 [see AFTAH article: "Wells Fargo Is a Huge Supporter of the Homosexual Agenda"]
Whirlpool Corp. Benton Harbor, MI 4
Wyndham Worldwide Corp. Parsippany, NJ 2

Xerox Corp. Stamford, CT 6

Yahoo! Inc. Sunnyvale, CA 1

Wells Fargo Is a Huge Supporter of the Homosexual Agenda

Peterlab — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:43:28 +0000

Part of the problem these days with pro-family corporate boycotts is that so many large companies have already sold out to the homosexual activist agenda. Wells Fargo is one of them. They are a Founding Sponsor of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NLGCC) — along with:

American Airlines
American Express
Ernst & Young
IBM
Intel
JPMorganChase
Lehman Brothers
Motorola
Travelport
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, earned a 100 percent ranking on the homosexual activist lobby Human Rights Campaign’s “2008 Corporate Equality Index” — it’s Wells Fargo’s fourth straight year with a perfect record. Click HERE to see the list of all 195 of the 100-percent Pro-Homosexual Companies, according to HRC. McDonald’s — target of a growing pro-family boycott started by AFA — got an 85 percent score this year; you can view HRC’s pro-homosexual criteria HERE in our McDonald’s article.

As an example of Wells Fargo’s aggressively pro-”gay” marketing strategy, the company sponsors the annual “NGLCC/Wells Fargo LGBT Business Owner of the Year Award.” (For the uninitiated, “LGBT” stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender.”) We suspect that many pro-family Americans — be they religious or not — would take their mortgage, loan or banking business elsewhere if they were to learn of Wells Fargo’s deep commitment to the Homosexual Lobby.

Do you want your money to end up supporting homosexual, bisexual and transsexual activism? Contact Wells Fargo through their online corporate contact page.

Which Corporations Have Bought into “Out & Equal’s” Agenda?

Sonja Dalton — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 06:24:46 +0000

A followup to AFTAH’s exclusive special report on Out & Equal’s radical agenda…

From the Out & Equal website:

Out & Equal Workplace Advocates is proud to display our ever-increasing list of corporations who support LGBT workplace equality by encouraging and fostering their own employee resource groups (ERGs). With such valuable workplace groups in place, employees in one ERG can turn to leaders in other groups to share resources and establish good workplace practices for LGBT employees. LGBT employees trust their employers are keeping their interests in mind when making key business decisions that affect all employees…

True Out & Equal Workplace Leaders

The following companies have already joined the Out & Equal ERG Registry:

Aetna — Agilent Technologies — Air Products and Chemicals — Alcatel-Lucent — Alliant Energy
Ameriprise Financial — AMR/American Airlines — AOL — AstraZeneca — AT&T

Bain and Company — Bank of America — Barclays Capital — Best Buy — Boeing
Booz Allen Hamilton — BP — Bristol-Myers Squibb — Bryan Cave LLP — BT

Cargill — Caterpillar Inc. — CH2M Hill — Charles Schwab — Chase — Chevron — Chubb
Cingular Wireless — Cisco Systems — Citigroup — Clorox — Coca-Cola — Consolidated Edison
Convergys — Coors — Credit Suisse — CSAA — Cummins — CUNA Mutual Group

DaimlerChrysler — Deloitte — Deutsche Bank — Diamond — Disney — Dow — DuPont

Eastman Kodak Company — Equality Cincinnati — Ernst & Young, LLP

Faegre & Benson, LLP — Fairview Health Services — Finger Lakes LGBT Workplace Alliance
Ford — Freescale

Gap Inc. — GE — GM — Google

Hallmark — Harris — Hewitt — Honeywell — HP — HSBC

IBM — ING — Intel — ITT Space Systems Division

James Madison University — JCPenney — Johnson & Johnson — JPMorgan Chase

Kaiser Permanente — Kimberly-Clark — KPMG LLP — Kraft Foods

Lockheed Martin

McDermott Will & Emery LLP — McDonald’s — McGraw-Hill — Medtronic — Mellon Financial
Merck Merrill Lynch — Microsoft — Morgan Stanley — Motorola

National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE — Nationwide — NCR
New York Life Insurance Co. — Nike, Inc. — Novartis

Owens Corning

PepsiCo — Pershing — Pfizer — Portland General Electric — Pratt & Whitney
PricewaterhouseCoopers — Principal Financial Group — Procter & Gamble — PSEG

Raytheon Company — Reuters

Safeway Inc — Shaw’s Supermarkets — Shell — SODEXHO — Space Coast Advocates’ Network
Starbucks Coffee Company — State Farm Insurance — Sun Microsystems — SUPERVALU

Teamsters — Texas Instruments — Thomson West — Time Warner — Toyota — Tropicana

University of Michigan Health System — University of Rochester — University of Virginia

Verizon — Visa

Wachovia — Waggener Edstrom Worldwide — WalMart — Wells Fargo — Wyeth

Xerox Corporation

Queer Inc: How Corporate America Fell in Love With Homosexuality

Sonja Dalton — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:00:31 +0000

This article is a must-read for anyone working for an American corporation. From the automotive, airline, and petrochemical industries to banks, retail stores, and restaurants patronized primarily by traditional families, employers are capitulating to the demands of homosexual activists who are organizing homosexual employees.

The pro-family movement must re-engage in the corporate arena, or there is no hope of recovering moral sanity in the larger culture. To start with we can demand strict neutrality in corporate “diversity” and giving programs, and an end to one-sided tolerance seminars that are in reality training sessions in “gay” ideology. — Peter LaBarbera

Excerpted from Queer Inc, by Marc Gunther, published Nov 30, 2006, by Fortune:

…A platoon of Raytheon employees wearing identical blue-and-black bowling shirts, pins with the company’s logo and black pants proudly walked the halls of this fall’s convention of Out & Equal, an organization that brings together the networks of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people – GLBT, in the argot of the moment – that have taken root at America’s big companies.

For three days in Chicago, with about 1,700 delegates from other companies, the 67 members of Raytheon’s GLBT network could attend workshops with such titles as The Cost of Transgender Health Benefits, Breaking Through the Lavender Ceiling and Male-on-Male Sexual Harassment: An Emerging Issue…

When Justin Nelson was trying to get the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce off the ground in 2003, IBM offered its support. “If they hadn’t joined, there wouldn’t be a chamber,” Nelson says. Big Blue was followed by Wells Fargo, Motorola, Intel, American Express and recently, Wal-Mart…

Some companies are grappling with how to manage employees switching from one sex to another. American Airlines and its HR people helped a 58-year-old pilot – an ex-Marine and Vietnam combat veteran – go from being Robert to Bobbi. Energy giant Chevron published “Transgender@Chevron,” an eight-page guide to the issues that come up when a worker changes gender identity, ranging from the bureaucratic (don’t forget to get a new security badge) to the everyday (when it’s appropriate to move from the men’s room to the ladies’ room or vice versa)…

This is how workplace changes typically happen at big companies – from the inside out. Gay and lesbian employees come out of the closet. They find one another. They organize. They enlist straight allies. And they take their concerns to top managers.

These gay networks customarily meet in company facilities, use the company intranet, and receive financial support…

Among corporations, IBM is the No. 1 financial supporter of gay rights groups in the U.S.
To export its gay-friendly culture, IBM supports employee GLBT groups in 23 countries, including Singapore, Slovakia and Colombia. There’s plenty to do: In 80 countries homosexual acts are illegal, as they were in parts of the U.S. until a few years ago.
Last year IBM convened a group of gay college students at the Human Rights Campaign to form a national organization of students in science and technology.
IBM persuaded Dr. Marci Bowers, one of the world’s leading sex-reassignment surgeons and herself a transgendered person, to participate in the company’s health insurance program.

…the truth is that for the past 15 years, boycotts or no boycotts, corporate America has been moving in only one direction, and at a pretty rapid pace.

Do you recall that the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel fired gay workers back in 1991 for not having “normal heterosexual values”? Well, a few years ago, when a Kodak employee sent an e-mail to co-workers objecting to the company’s endorsement of National Coming Out day as “disgusting and offensive,” he was the one who was fired when he declined to apologize. He was entitled to his beliefs, the company explained, but his behavior was not aligned with Kodak’s values.

So it’s clear where big business is going. What’s interesting is to watch it pull the rest of the country along. It turns out that the most important factor shaping people’s feelings about gay issues is not their age or even their religion – although those do matter – but whether they have relatives, friends or co-workers who are gay.

Continue reading at CNN…

138 Fully Pro-Homosexual Corporations

Sonja Dalton — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 04:44:35 +0000

From America’s pro-homosexual giants: 2006, published Sept 20, 2006, by WorldNet Daily:
Below is the list of companies scoring a perfect 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2006 Corporate Equality Index, with policies beneficial toward homosexuals:

Adobe Systems

Aetna

Agere Systems

Agilent Technologies

Allianz Life Insurance

Alston & Bird

American Express

AMR Corp. (American Airlines)

Anheuser-Busch

Apple Computer

Arnold & Porter

AT&T

Avaya

Bain & Company

Bank of America

Bausch & Lomb

Bell South

Best Buy

Boeing

BP America

Bright Horizons Family Solutions

Bristol-Myers Squibb

California State Automobile Association

Capital One Financial

Cargill

Carlson Companies

Charles Schwab

Chevron

ChoicePoint

Chubb

CIGNA

Cisco Systems

Citigroup

Clear Channel Communications

Clorox

CMP Media

CNA Insurance

Coca-Cola Company

Consolidated Edison

Coors Brewing

Corning

Credit Suisse First Boston

Cummins

Daimler Chrysler

Dell

Deloitte & Touche USA

Deutsche Bank

Dorsey & Whitney

Dow Chemical

DuPont

Eastman Kodak

Eli Lilly & Co.

Ernst & Young

Estee Lauder Companies

Faegre & Benson

Fannie Mae

Ford Motor Co.

Freescale Semiconductor

Gap Inc.

General Mills

General Motors

GlaxoSmithKline

Global Hyatt

Goldman Sachs Group

Google

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

Heller Ehrman

Hewitt Associates

Hewlett-Packard

Honeywell International

Hospira

ING North America Insurance

Intel

IBM

Intuit

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Jenner & Block

Johnson & Johnson

Kaiser Permanente

Keyspan

Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group

KPMG

Kraft Foods

Lehman Brothers Holdings

Levi Strauss & Co.

Lexmark International

Liz Claiborne

Lucent Technologies

McDermott Will & Emery

McKinsey & Co.

Mellon Financial

Merck & Co.

Merrill Lynch

MetLife

Microsoft

Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams

Morgan Stanley

Morrison & Foerster

Motorola

Nationwide

NCR Corp.

New York Times Co.

Nike

Nixon Peabody

Nordstrom

Northrop Grumman

Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe

Owens Corning

Pepsico

Pfizer

PG&E

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman

Powell Goldstein

PriceWaterhouseCoopers

Prudential Financial

Raytheon

Replacements

SC Johnson & Son

Schering-Plough

Sears Holdings Corporation

Sempra Energy

Sprint Nextel

Starcom MediaVest

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

State Street

Sun Microsystems

SunTrust Banks

Tech Data Corp.

The Olivia Companies

US Airways

Viacom

Visa International

Volkswagen of America

Wachovia

Walgreens

Wells Fargo

Whirlpool

Xerox

List of Gay Friendly Companies Continues to Grow

Sonja Dalton — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 02:57:40 +0000

Excerpted from List of GayFriendly Companies Continues to Grow, published Sept 21, 2006, by Agape Press:

The 2006 Corporate Equality Index’s 138-member list includes perennial representatives like IBM, Levi-Strauss, Nike, and even Ford Motor Company. It measures benefits and protections to “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender” employees and customers, including promises against discrimination. The jump from a list of 101 last year to 138 this year is being called a reflection of several culture trends. (See related article on WorldNetDaily)

Peter LaBarbera is president of Americans for Truth, a group that monitors the homosexual agenda throughout American culture. He contends that the campaigns to portray homosexuals and transgenders as a minority — and to represent them as large contributors to corporate America’s bottom line — has been successful…

Continue reading at Agape Press…

Wal-Mart Hires Pro-Homosexual Marketing Firm

Sonja Dalton — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:41:16 +0000

Excerpted from Wal-Mart Partners With Gay and Lesbian Group, by Mya Frazier, published Aug 24, 2006, by American Family Association:

…Wal-Mart hired Witeck-Combs Communications, a marketing shop known for its work targeting the gay and lesbian consumer market, according to Bob Witeck, president of the Washington-based firm…

Founded in 1993, the eight-person agency’s client list boasts automotive brands Volvo, Land Rover, and Jaguar, in addition to American Airlines, Citigroup and at least a dozen nonprofits, such as the American Association of People with Disabilities.

Witeck-Combs, a member of the NGLCC, is also a participant in the organization’s supplier-diversity initiative, or SDI, a certification program launched this year and modeled after minority- and women-supplier development programs. Corporate participants already include IBM, American Airlines, Motorola and American Express.

…As part of the Wal-Mart Stores partnership with the NGLCC, Dee Breazeale, VP-divisional merchandising, Sam’s Club Jewelry, has joined the organization’s Corporate Advisory Council and Wal-Mart will sponsor two of the organization’s annual conferences.

Mr. Nelson said Wal-Mart approached the organization four months ago, expressing interest in the supplier-diversity initiative. “The expectation is that Wal-Mart will encourage their core suppliers — the P&G’s, the Johnson & Johnson’s and the Gillette’s — to also diversify their revenue streams to include LGTB businesses,” Mr. Nelson said.

He said the retailer is “working right now on providing domestic-partnership benefits” and that Wal-Mart may soon join the 261 members of the Fortune 500 that offer the benefits.

The steps being taken by Wal-Mart are the strongest signal yet that the company may be taking a permanent stand on the side of gay rights…

Continue reading at AFA…

FOX News & Wal-Mart Sponsor National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Convention This Weekend

Sonja Dalton — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:42:30 +0000

By Peter LaBarbera

Fox News and Wal-mart are among the high-level ($10,000) sponsors of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s (NLGJA) 2006 Convention in Miami (Sept 7-10 at Loew’s Miami Beach Hotel). Every year, the NLGJA garners hundreds of thousands of dollars in Big Media sponsorships for its convention; this year it appears (based on the sponsorship list below) that the total is around half a milliion dollars in corporate support.

The NLGJA bills itself as merely a professional organization for journalists who “happen to be gay,” as the liberal cliche goes. But the organization advocates a pro-homosexual “spinning” of the news not unlike the activist group GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Note, for example, the NLGJA’s advice to the media regarding coverage of Lance Bass, the ‘N Sync band member who recently publicly revealed his homosexuality:

The term “gay” is the preferred adjective that has largely replaced “homosexual” in referring to men who are sexually and affectionally attracted to other men. “Homosexual” should be used only if “heterosexual” would be used in parallel constructions, such as in medical contexts.

Whether in headlines, teases, or body copy, try to avoid using forms of the word “admit,” which is typically used in the context of something shameful or illegal. Some examples of less potentially charged words are “announce,” “disclose” and “say.”

While it is true that the “mainstream” (read: dominant liberal) media is so pro-homosexuality these days that it is hard to discern between media activism and plain old homosexual-group activism, that does not make it right. The media should play it down the middle on homosexuality and other controversial issues, not serve as a cheerleader for the “gay rights” cause.

Yet over the years, NLGJA members have repeatedly suggested that covering “both sides” of homosexuality-related issues is like quoting the KKK on stories about African Americans–a preposterous analogy especially considering that Blacks and minorities poll stronger against “gay marriage” than whites. Thus, if you think the Lance Bass advice above is tendentious, try this from NLGJA National President Eric Hegedus (a page designer for the Philadelphia Inquirer), who repeats the spurious white supremacist comparison on the journalist group’s website (emphasis added):

How appropriate is it to quote interviewees whose ideas could be considered homophobic?… Certainly, news organizations have written extensively about white supremacists and other hate groups. For instance, in October we saw a flurry of stories about 13-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede, who use entertainment to promote the supremacist movement (“Young singers spread racist hate,” said a headline on the ABC News Web site). But I doubt that any journalist is adding them to a source contact list for bringing “balance” to future stories about reparations, interracial marriage, the Holocaust or immigration. That same ethic needs to extend to LGBT coverage, too.

Although not all NLGJA members may share Hegedus’ view on this, clearly the NLGJA is an activist organization with a strong institutional bias against those espousing traditionalist views on homosexuality.

Our question for Fox News executives is: if you are truly “fair and balanced,” will you now give an equal and corresponding grant to Americans for Truth or another pro-family organization, say, Accuracy in Media, that counters the ubiquitous pro-”gay” spin in the media? We’ll be awaiting your answer.

The following are corporate sponsors for this year’s NLGJA conference in Miami:

“Groundbreaker Level” – $35,000

• Miami Herald
• El Nuevo Herald
• McClatchy Co

“Headliner Level” – $25,000

• Planet Out
• Harrah’s
• Jet Blue

“Editorial Level” – $15,000

• MGM Mirage
• BELO
• CBS
• CNN
• Gannett Foundation
• Hearst Corp
• Coca Cola
• Orbitz
• US Newswire
• ESPN
• Verizon
• Microsoft

“Feature Level” – $10,000

• NBC Universal
• Key West
• Gilead
• Toyota
• IBM
• Passport
• (illegible)
• Bloomberg
• Wal-Mart – [That’s right, the same Wal-Mart that recently gave $25,000 to National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce is also sponsoring NLGJA–Ed.]
• Sam’s Club
• Fox News

“News Brief Level” – $5,000

• ABC News
• GM
• Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau
• Hill & Knowlton
• Kimpton Hotels
• Nielson Media Research
• Q Syndicate
• UBS
• China Grill

“Source Level” – up to $5,000

• Los Angeles Times
• Page & Author
• South Florida Black Journalists Association
• South Florida Sun-Sentinel
• Washington Post
• Tribune Company