Showing posts with label CEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CEO. Show all posts

Starbucks CEO: If you support traditional marriage, take your business elsewhere!

At the Starbucks annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday, CEO Howard Schultz sent a clear message to anyone who supports traditional marriage over gay marriage: we don't want your business. After saying Starbucks wants to "embrace diversity of all kinds," he told a shareholder who supports traditional marriage that he should sell his shares and invest in some other company.

According to a report by Forbes, Schultz seemed a bit intolerant of any Starbucks shareholders who opposed gay marriage for moral or religious reasons. During the meeting, shareholder Tom Strobhar (who founded the Corporate Morality Action Center) pointed out that after the company voiced its support for a referendum backing gay marriage in Washington state, a boycott by traditional marriage supporters caused a drop in sales revenue. Schultz told him "You can sell your shares in Starbucks and buy shares in another company" if he did not agree with the company's pro-gay marriage stand.

Despite strong opposition from the religious and political right, support for gay marriage in America has risen in recent years. The rise of support for gay marriage has also seen a rise of intolerance for those who oppose it. Many who joined the boycott of Starbucks last year were dismissed as bigots, even though the boycott did cause revenue to drop. A website, DumpStarbucks.com, has earned tens of thousands of supporters who refuse to buy from the coffee chain in response.

Gay conservative puts intolerant Mozilla in its place

You've likely heard the news about Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich stepping down as head of the company because in 2008, he gave $1,000 to a group supporting Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California. Eich had helped found the company and had only recently been appointed CEO. He refused to discuss the topic in public, saying it was a private matter. It is still unclear how knowledge of the donation was made public from the tax return of a private citizen.

Gay rights advocates mounted a protest and boycott of the company until Eich departed, and Mozilla apologized after he left the company, stating that "we haven't stayed true to ourselves" in hiring Eich and insisting that it supports "equality and freedom of speech." Well, one out of two, apparently.

While many on the left (and the media) celebrated the move as a victory against anti-gay bigotry, one person ignited a firestorm by calling out Mozilla and gay rights advocates on their hypocrisy. And he did it in less than 140 characters.