Corporate America Fights DOMA

A few weeks back I did a post about The "Family" Research Council, and the foot-stomp, head-snap, boycott of Home Depot, because The Depot is LGBT-friendly. And, The Depot wasn't backing down from it's LGBT-friendliness. I also mentioned Macy's, Absolut, Subaru and American Airlines as LGBT-friendly companies.

Well, turns out there are more.

Some of the country's biggest corporations have joined the legal battle against the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA], saying the law "conscripts [employers] to become the face of its discrimination."

These companies, who want to fight DOMA because it's just plain wrong and bad for business, include Microsoft, Google, Aetna, Nike, Levi Strauss, Starbucks, CBS and Time Warner Cable.

We all know that President Obama withdrew his administration's defense of DOMA last February, but that the GOP, having nothing better to do since the economy is chugging along nicely, and unemployment is at an all-time low, and none of the 99% are losing their homes, then hired former  U.S. solicitor general, Paul Clement, to argue on behalf of the discriminatory law in about a dozen cases around the nation.

Well, these LGBT-friendly corporations will not be arguing the "constitutional issues" of the case, but will, instead, be focusing on how DOMA impacts the employers, including higher taxes on corporations that provide health benefits to their employees' same-sex spouses.

These companies say that some employers provide additional benefits to LGBT employees to equalize their treatment in the workforce. For example, a company, at its own expense, might offer family leave to care for an ailing same-sex spouse, or beef up its retirement program to match the survivors' benefits available to opposite-sex couples. 

So, by requiring employers to treat some workers as married under state law but single under federal law, DOMA forces them to keep "two sets of books" and undergo administrative burdens, the brief said.

It said the law also damages workplace morale.

The companies' lawyers told the court: "The employer becomes the face of DOMA's discriminatory treatment, and is placed in the role of intrusive inquisitor (and) withholder of benefits." And, they added, that as of 2008, 94% of Fortune 500 companies protected LGBT employees against discrimination. DOMA, the lawyers said, requires that "we renounce these principles, or betray them."

So, get out your notepads, and write down the names of those companies who are stepping up to fight discrimination. Sure, they're doing it for their own benefit, for their own corporate interests, but we benefit, too.

via SF Gate