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Closi

As someone who works for a mostly apolitical organization - it depends on the issue.

For example, the company refuses to take a stance on:

- Brexit (even though it will negatively impact them)

- Elections or any vote (even though again, this impacts them)

But for example actively campaigns on:

- Agricultural issues (It's in the food industry)

The company VERY strongly supports LGBT rights and minority rights, and will raise money for charities, but typically this does not transfer into support of individual political policies or parties.

The view is effectively that the company has lots of customers, and we shouldn't alienate them if they have opposing views, and that taking a strong political stance outside our industry can look like we are not respecting opposing viewpoints that our customers or competitors may have.

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It's not true that "LGBT Rights" are value-free. Promoting LGBT rights also alienates members of the largest religious groups in the world, including those that are majority-non-European like Islam and Catholicism. Being a practicing L, G, B, or T or pro any of them is against sharia, the Catechism, and against the rules of many major Protestant sects like Mormons. Gay marriage is expressly against the rules of most major global belief groups that are not the US and its Marshall Plan colonies.

Without a lot of double speak, there is no such thing as a 'universally tolerant' corporate policy because different legal, social, and religious moral frameworks are mutually incompatible. In the US people just prefer to pretend that post-Protestant Woo-ism is universally friendly to everyone.

Your high level point about universal tolerance stands - but you might like to challenge some of your object level assumptions about world religions and LGBT. Iranian theocratic leadership for example officially does not think that being trans is against sharia and the nation carries out more gender reassignment surgeries than any country except Thailand (not that their treatment of trans people is perfect by any means).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_Iran

A past employer decided to publish a rainbow themed design for LGBTQ pride and rolled back the UAE version of the website following feedback from clients there.

I think "impossible to reconcile with the codified teachings of religion X" and "would receive negative feedback / appear intolerant to people currently practicing religion X" are different claims. Though I totally agree the latter is a good argument for why "universal tolerance" is not a straightforward concept.

Specifically: I'm disputing the theological claim "Being a practicing L, G, B, or T or pro any of them is against sharia, the Catechism, and against the rules of many major Protestant sects like Mormons." That's not really a settled question.

i hope you realize that homosexuals in iran are sometimes forced to transition just so they don't get killed.

>Iran is one of a handful of countries where homosexual acts are punishable by death. Clerics do, however accept the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the wrong sex. So homosexuals can be pushed into having gender reassignment surgery - and to avoid it many flee the country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690

Yeah Iran remains massively homophobic and hostile to LGBT rights - the variety of approaches taken shows that there is scope for the laws to be interpreted as compatible. I'd argue that claiming that LGBT rights are irreconcilable with Islamic law makes things worse overall.

Sodomy is illegal in Iran. This has statute citations, but I don't know where Iranian laws are posted. https://pridelegal.com/iran-lgbt-laws/

Point being there is no such thing as a universally 'tolerant' moral system -- no matter what stance you profess to take on a given issue of this type, it will be discriminatory against very large groups of people (billions of them).

It's about taking a sensible approach according to the culture your company operates in.

An apolitical company can still clearly say "slavery is bad" even though it does happen in some places in the world.

From the article you link:

> They sanction funds for sex reassignment surgery in order to fit all of their citizens

> into the category of either male or female without any grey area for those who are homosexual

> or transgender.

So support the T specifically for the purposes of denying the L, G and B. Grandparent looks at least 3/4 correct to me...

Iran subsidises gender reassignment surgeries because homosexuality in Iran is a capital crime. Transitioning is that country's form of conversion therapy; hardly progressive.

Funny you should say that, as the Marshall Plan terms were quite generous and the countries that refused them due to commie pressure are now significantly worse of in terms of GDP per capita, etc.

So many of these major companies are extremely vocal about LGBT+ rights but it's all just lip service, the second it comes down to money the whole thing goes out the window.

Look at Apple they were very proud to tell us about their pride themed watch face and emoji, yet some developer within Apple had to write the if statement to disable these graphics if the device is in Russia [1]. By choosing to take a stance on these issues but not willing to take the monetary loss you're causing someone in your organisation to write that if statement which could even be interpreted as an active act of oppression to LGBT+ people.

If your company truly holds these values then there shouldn't be even a question about giving up that revenue for the greater good. Until that moment then its just performative, taking advantage of those communities for the sake of advertising and headlines.

If money is more important which we know it is because you wrote the if statement, well maybe leave politics at the door then.

[1] : https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/31/17803638/apple-watch-prid...

A 'principled stand' in Russia would be to accept all the legal punishments that would come from flouting Russian law and the moral conventions of the dominant religion in Russia. That would be consistent with the principles of 'civil disobedience.'

However, globocorps do not do that. They are woke where the educated elite are aggressively secular and the laws support it, and they are profit focused and 'business-first' where it isn't. The US educated elite is under a mistaken impression that its secularism is 'tolerant' or 'universal' when it is actually rather parochial, particular, and incompatible with most of the largest global faith groups. The US outlook is also incompatible with Chinese political culture, and China will control the largest and most significant economic power bloc over the next 30 years -- no one else will be close, including the rapidly declining US.

I didn’t say the company was value/culture free - apolitical doesn’t mean that they don’t have values, morals and core beliefs.

It’s about adopting values which tend to unite your customers rather than divide them, and in the U.K. at least LGBT rights is one of those issues. A stance of no-support on these issues would elicit a severe backlash from customers in the U.K. but meanwhile they aren’t campaigning for changes to the law in these areas, or supporting particular political parties because of it (as reasonable people could disagree on that because of how democracies work, and doing this will alienate specific customer groups).

Not to mention that "LGBT" rights aren't a single, unified campaign and increasingly are in conflict with each other. Many, many gays and lesbians feel threatened by modern transgender ideology, and not without good reason. "LGBT" is an increasingly shaky alliance.

What's the difference between strongly supporting LGBT rights and strongly supporting remaining in the EU?

Both likely affect the company significantly, both are (unfortunately) political issues, both (unfortunately) alienate people.

It seems the only distinction here is that Brexit is a closer call in the UK. Is there another way of looking at it?

One is a human rights issue, the other is not.

Brexit is absolutely a human rights issue. The leave campaign specifically talked up withdrawing from EU human rights laws and agreements.

That statement alone will divide customers in the U.K. and the advantages/disadvantages of withdrawing from EU human rights agreements are something that reasonable people disagree on.

Generally supporting established lgbt rights with no specific link to policy is different - it’s overwhelmingly supported and not even generally classed as a political view anymore (along with “is evil bad?”).

You're missing your own bias. There are people in the US (and in the UK, in the Vote Leave team who are now in Government) who believe that LGBT people (in particular the T) shouldn't exist.

LGBT rights are human rights. Brexit absolutely has a human rights component to it.

My take on it: Most LGBTQ+ rights issues are almost entirely settled and agreed on anyways at the greater societal level. You'd be hard pressed to find an appreciable amount of people that rationally want to take away normal, everyday rights from LGBTQ+ individuals. Sure there are exotic and controversial discussion points (E.g. child transitioning, odd bathroom laws, etc) but no normal business touches those issues with anything but a ten-foot pole and vague "messages of support". Brexit, on the other hand, is probably a 50-50 split within the overall population in terms of support and is an arguable/defendable position that rational people can and do make.

You got it. Why alienate 50% of your customers?

Meanwhile LGBT rights are pretty much universally agreed, and I don’t think that “LGBT support” is generally classed as a political view so much as an expected cultural norm (i.e. not showing support would elicit a severe backlash within the customer base).

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