(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook joined other technology-industry leaders criticizing Indiana Governor Mike Pence for signing legislation that critics say targets the gay community.
Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law Thursday in Indiana. The statute gives businesses the right not to serve gays and lesbians on religious grounds.
“We are deeply disappointed in Indiana’s new law,” Cook wrote in a Twitter post Friday. He called on the Arkansas governor to veto a similar measure in that state.
“Around the world, we strive to treat every customer the same -- regardless of where they come from, how they worship or who they love,” Cook wrote in a subsequent post.
Cook criticized his home state of Alabama in October for not protecting people based on their sexual orientation. A few days later, in an essay in Bloomberg Businessweek, he said he was gay. “I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me,” he wrote.
Salesforce.com Inc. CEO Marc Benioff on Thursday tweeted that the software company was “canceling all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana to face discrimination.”
Yelp Howls
Hours later, Jeremy Stoppelman, the CEO of Yelp Inc. wrote “An Open Letter to States Considering Imposing Discrimination Laws.”
“Yelp will make every effort to expand its corporate presence only in states that do not have these laws allowing for discrimination on the books,” the letter said.
Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal, also criticized the Indiana law in a Twitter message.
Kara Brooks, Pence’s press secretary, said the law doesn’t legalize discrimination.
“For more than twenty years, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act has never undermined our nation’s anti-discrimination laws, and this law will not do so in Indiana either,” she said by e-mail.
Presidential Race
Pence, a former six-term congressman and conservative talk-show radio host, has been mentioned by some media outlets as a potential candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
Indiana stands “for the importance of marriage and the freedom of religion,” he said in a Feb. 27 speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee in suburban Washington.
Lawmakers have introduced more than 85 bills that penalize members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in 28 state legislatures this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT-rights organization.
“Many of these bills could critically undermine the enforcement of state nondiscrimination protections and passing them will do serious harm to the business climate of these states,” the organization wrote in response to the Indiana law. The group plans to place a full-page ad in the San Jose Mercury News to inform Silicon Valley companies about the law, Jason Rahlan, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, said by e-mail.
As of the end of last year, 20 states had legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity, according to data compiled by the organization.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jack Clark in San Francisco at jclark185@bloomberg.net; Tim Jones in Chicago at tjones58@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net; Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net Tony Robinson, Lisa Wolfson
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/195toNW
0 comments:
Post a Comment