Know Thy Neighbor

Know Thy Neighbor is a website that was created in 2005, in response to an initiative petition to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. It was the brainchild of Tom Lang, a gay married man, and Aaron Toleos, a straight married man. These two men saw the petition for what it was: discrimination.

Lang and Toleos created the site to draw attention to the petition, and to provide a platform for the gay equality movement at a grassroots level.

In December of 2005, KnowThyNeighbor.org published the names of all 148,000+ petition signers and altered the dynamic of the petition process in several important ways:

Anti-gay marriage activists and supporters lost their veil of anonymity. KnowThyNeighbor.org believes that citizens who sponsor an amendment to take away people's rights, or to deny people their constitutional rights, should never be allowed to do so under the cover of darkness.

Putting the names online led to the discovery of fraud in the signature collection process. Both civil and criminal investigators have been assigned by the Attorney General.

The GLBT leadership often lets fundraising and legislative lobbying efforts take precedence over grassroots, neighbor-to-neighbor advocacy. But a face-to-face conversation with someone you know can sometimes be the most powerful agent of change. KnowThyNeighbor.org exists to make sure those conversations happen!

A KnowThyNeighbor site cropped up in Arkansas recently when that state decided to ban gay couple, or single gay men and women, from adopting. That site printed all the names of people in and out of Arkansas who signed the petition to deny gay people their rights.

And they discovered one important name:

Mike Duke, CEO of WalMart, Inc.

Now, Mike Duke can support whatever causes he chooses, even the hateful ones, but as CEO of WalMart, a company that claims to have an environment of "diversity" within its stores, he should think twice before putting pen to paper.

The Human Rights Campaign, however, disputes WalMart's claim, and ranked it at 40% in its Corporate Equality Index in 2008.

In addition to Mike Duke, they have also discovered the name of one Susan Duke, his wife. She also signed the petition to ban gays and lesbians from adopting children, and Susan Duke sits on the board of the Northwest Arkansas Children's Shelter.

Shocking.

So, maybe take a moment to think about shopping at WalMart, not just for the atrocious way it treats its employees but for it's out-and-out discrimination of the LGBT community. Take a moment and tell WalMart that you don't support discrimination of any kind.