By Brian Mastroianni
Friday, April 03, 2015
Big-name American companies blasting Indiana over a law
they say promotes discrimination based on sexual orientation check their social
consciences at the border when it comes to doing business in nations where gay
people face persecution and even death for their orientation, say critics.
Companies including Apple, The Gap and Levi’s - all of which do business in nations with
abysmal human rights records - were among the harshest critics of the Hoosier
State’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which advocates say defends
religious freedom and is similar to a federal law and regulations on the books
in more than a dozen states. Other companies have even taken the unusual step
of banning employees from “non-essential” travel to Indiana over the law, which
state lawmakers revised to bar for-profit businesses from refusing to serve the
public based on sexual orientation. But the amended version only came after
executives behind some of America’s best-known brands came down hard on Indiana.
“Our message, to people around the country and around the
world, is this: Apple is open,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a Washington Post
Op-Ed this week. “Open to everyone, regardless of where they come from, what
they look like, how they worship or who they love. Regardless of what the law
might allow in Indiana or Arkansas, we will never tolerate discrimination.”
The openly-gay Cook made no reference to the fact that
Apple’s website proudly notes its products are sold through authorized dealers
in such countries as Iran, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab
Emirates, all countries where homosexuality may be punishable by death. That
has some critics wondering why the corporate outrage is so narrowly focused on
the Midwest.
“It seems remarkable that he’s doing business in
countries that execute gays and lesbians simply for being gay,” Ryan Anderson,
the William E. Simon Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told FoxNews.com.
Clothing retailers Gap and Levi Strauss also blasted the
bill despite operating company stores in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In a joint
statement, Gap CEO Art Beck and Levi's boss Chip Bergh criticized Indiana's law
and a similar one recently passed in Arkansas.
“As Indiana, Arkansas and states around the country enact
and consider legislation that perpetuates discrimination, we’re urging state
legislatures to stand up for equality by repealing and voting against these
discriminatory laws,” the two stated. “These new laws and legislation that
allow people and businesses to deny service to people based on their sexual
orientation turn back the clock on equality and foster a culture of
intolerance.”
Another outspoken opponent of the first draft of the
Indiana law was Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, a San Francisco-based
cloud computing company. He took to Twitter to announce that his business would
cancel “all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana
to face discrimination.” Benioff even announced the company will try to help
employees who live in Indiana and move out of the state.
Critics say Benioff, like Cook, has a selective sense of
outrage. Noting salesforce.com has a branch in Beijing, Mollie Hemingway, of
The Federalist, cited a recent U.S. Commission on International Religious
Freedom report on China, which accused the nation of “particularly severe
violations of religious freedom.” Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, Catholics,
Protestants and practitioners of Falun Gong face imprisonment, torture and even
organ harvesting, according to the commission.
“I guess we can at least say Benioff is showing
consistency in his dislike of religious liberty,” Hemingway wrote.
In addition, salesforce.com has a global reach through a
network of “partners,” some of whom do business in some of the world’s most
brutal nations. Cloud Concept, which is touted by salesforce.com’s website as
the “longest-serving and most trusted salesforce.com Gold Cloud Alliance
Partner in the Middle East,” has a presence in the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi
Arabia. Similarly, NSI, another one of salesforce.com’s partners, has a
presence in the same three countries, where gays can face execution for their
sexual orientation.
When asked if Benioff's social media statements regarding
Indiana were at odds with the company's global business practices,
salesforce.com officials declined to comment. Officials from Apple and The Gap
also declined to comment on how they reconciled their outrage at Indiana's law
with doing business in countries that deal harshly with gays.
Conservatives such as Anderson and Hemingway are not the
only ones who see a disconnect with American companies haranguing Indiana
lawmakers while making millions of dollars in countries ruled by homophobic
dictators and intolerant tinhorns.
“I certainly think in countries where some of these
businesses and corporations are directly doing business — where they are
liaising with government leaders and trade authorities — I think there is no
question, if this is a cause that they want to support they should speak out at
the very minimum,” Suzanne Trimel, communications director for the
International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, told FoxNews.com.
Trimel said that she would like to see some of these
companies speak out on oppressive sanctions and human rights violations against
LGBT people in these countries in the same way that they spoke out agains the
legislation out of Indiana.
“Many of them could ask within their own workplace (in
these countries) for non-discrimination policies,” Trimel said. “They could
also reach out to local LGBT communities and activists, and try to seek greater
diversity in their workforces on the ground … make it clear that they are not
accepting of repressive policies or persecutions, which, as we know, are
endemic throughout the ‘Global South.’ ”
The juggling act of advocating for one cause domestically
while carrying out business in a different country that supports the exact
opposite point of view is particularly difficult for these companies from a
public relations standpoint, Cayce Myers, legal research editor for the
Institute for Public Relations, told FoxNews.com.
“These companies have to be careful in crafting their
image,” Myers said. “First, they have to keep in mind, ‘What is the culture and
attitude of the public in this other country?’ and secondly, ‘How do I tailor
my organization’s message to comport with that?’ ”
However, Myers suggested that it could be very hard for a
large company like Apple to release a statement against another country’s laws.
“It’s very tricky for an American company to do that,”
Myers added. “In America, we have an evolving public opinion about LGBT rights.
In Saudi Arabia, for example, you don’t have that. I don’t have opinion polls
or a statistic for that country, but their political tradition is much more
informed by religious views — it comes from a different tradition that is very
informed by a religious context.”
Still, Trimel said she would like to see these major
American companies do more.
“When they (the companies) sit down with trade
representatives they could start talking about these issues,” Trimel said.
“They could put them in a position where they really have to listen.”
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