Finally some courage. Alcoa is the only company so far to say explicitly that they oppose the Tennessee legislation that would repeal Nashville's civil rights ordinance, and that they want the Governor to veto the bill.
Alcoa:
“Alcoa provides equal employment opportunity without discrimination and supports state and local legislation protecting the rights of all community members. We do not agree with the chamber on this issue and would ask that the governor veto the bill."
Beautiful statement. Simple, clear, to the point. No semantic games, no trying to have it both ways.
In contrast,
AT&T,
Nissan and
FedEx issued statements that might look like they're opposing the legislation (that's how HRC has apparently interpreted their statements), but when you actually read the statements a few times you realize they're a very well-crafted effort at saying nothing at all (it helps to have a law degree).
None of the statements from AT&T, Nissan or FedEx state unequivocally that they oppose the legislation. None of the statements call on the Governor to veto the legislation.
Alcoa is the only board member of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce that didn't play games with their statement. Until AT&T, Nissan, FedEx, Comcast, DuPont, Pfizer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Caterpillar, KPMG, Whirlpool, Embraer, and United HealthCare all issue statements calling on the governor to veto the bill, they get zero credit for trying to rectify the damage they've done.
Please sign our open letter calling on all of these companies to tell the governor to veto the bill.
"We're losing on [gay marriage], especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don't know if that's going to change with a little more age, demographers would say probably not. We've probably lost that. I don't want to be extremist here, but I think we need to start calculating where we are in the culture." - Focus Of The Family president Jim Daly, speaking to World Magazine.
