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.

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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

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

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…

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