The marriage of the Market Is God crowd with the Fundamentalist “Homophobia and Misogyny Are God” crowd has always been funny to me. Anyone who’s ever paid attention to that tenuous marriage understands that rank-and-file Republican leaders really don’t view social conservatives as anything more than useful idiots. Therefore it’s always entertaining when Big Bidness squarely slaps them in the face. This is one of those times:

Some of the nation’s most prominent corporations have joined the legal battle against the federal ban on marital benefits for same-sex couples, saying the law drives up employers’ costs and makes them the agents of government-sanctioned bias.

The 1996 law, known as the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA, “conscripts (employers) to become the face of its discrimination,” lawyers for 60 companies said Thursday in papers filed with a federal appeals court in Boston.

Participants included Microsoft, Google, Aetna, Nike, Levi Strauss, Starbucks, CBS and Time Warner Cable. The brief was also signed by several trade organizations and the city governments of Boston, New York and Cambridge, Mass.

DOMA denies federal benefits, including joint tax filings, Social Security survivor coverage and immigration privileges, to same-sex couples legally married in their states.

In short, DOMA makes it more difficult for them to do business, and it makes it difficult for them to treat their employees fairly. One place the corporate world is far and away ahead of society is that, as the piece points out, 94% of Fortune 500 companies prohibit discrimination against gay employees, to some extent or another. With DOMA in place, not only does it put an undue burden on corporations when it comes to things like paying for spousal health insurance, but companies have to go against what they actually believe in by treating their gay employees unfairly.

Corporations, of course, are equal opportunity donors to both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, when it comes to voters, the ones who are most likely to defend, at all costs, the rights of companies to do as they wish tend to be Republicans.

Oh, it must be confusing to be Tony Perkins these days!

So, CBS rejects a pro-gay church ad a few years back and now a gay dating site with a comedy kiss. Yet, they are allowing Focus on the Family to broadcast an anti-abortion ad featuring football star Tim Tebow. Is this a double standard or did the dating ad deserve to be rejected? I’d love our reader’s thoughts on this matter.

Update: Gay-themed GoDaddy ad is also rejected by CBS…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, Aug. 29, 2008

Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org

TWO Sends Palin A Book To Help Change Her Backward, Unscientific Views

NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out criticized Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin today for repeatedly saying in an interview with Katie Couric on CBS News that homosexuality is a choice.

“While it is encouraging that Palin has a gay friend, we are still disturbed that a person on the cusp of enormous power could hold such backward and unscientific views,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “She seems to be in lockstep with her church, that promoted a “pray away the gay’ conference in Anchorage. We hope Palin will choose to educate herself so she will learn that being gay is not a casual choice, like eating moose stew for dinner. We want her to understand that you can’t pray away the gay.”

Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen sent Palin his book today, “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.” He hopes it will bring her up to speed on the latest science on homosexuality, as well as introduce her to the damage done to gay people who “choose” to go straight. Every respected medical and mental health association in America — including the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association — warn that so-called “ex-gay” sexual engineering programs can be harmful.

On the topic of sexual orientation, Palin told Couric the following:

“And you know, I don’t know what prayers are worthy of being prayed and I don’t know what prayers are going to be answered or not answered. But as for homosexuality, I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships. I have one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years who happens to be gay, and I love her dearly, and she is not my ‘gay friend, she is one of my best friends, who happens to have made a choice that isn’t a choice that I have made. But I’m not going to judge people.”