Queer, Inc.

[Triana]

Please don't damn me for the title. I didn't chose it. It's the actual title of the article.

Queer Inc.
How Corporate America fell in love with gays and lesbians. It's a movement.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
November 30 2006: 9:18 AM EST

(Fortune Magazine) -- Business is booming at Raytheon (Charts), the $22-billion-a-year defense contractor that sells Tomahawk cruise missiles, laser-vision goggles and advanced radar systems to the Pentagon. This, improbably, is good news for the gay-rights movement.

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.

As a high-profile supporter of gay rights, Raytheon of course provides health-care benefits to the domestic partners of its gay employees. It does a lot more, too. The company supports a wide array of gay-rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay-advocacy group. Its employees march under the Raytheon banner at gay-pride celebrations and AIDS walks.


MUCH More...very surprising article.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/12/11/8395465/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote

[sui generis]

1. Raytheon has a facility in Dallas

in "the Gay Ghetto", or "Homo Heights" (average price of house or condo well over 350K), right next to the "gay" Homo Depot which on any given day has more beemers and mercedes in the parking lot than the mercedes dealership next door does.

I think GLBT nationally spend something like 20 billion a year on consumer goods above and beyond groceries and general repair; not to mention the spending power of friends, family and good hearted supporters.

It's definitely "worth" supporting us in the corporate world - where the only thing that talks is money. Plus a lot of them are just now figuring out that gays are not the new "black", and this is not the fifties.

:P

[BR_Parkway]

2. Outstanding, and nice to see the AFA hate for profit types shown

in their typical light to such a wide audience

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. There's a profit motive, in addition to a PR one.

Sadly, the benefits for gays cost less because they are less likely to have dependents. Further, their absenteeism is less because they generally don't have to stay home with sick kids.

Inclusion is a good thing, but it's not all benevolence on Raytheon's part.