DU Action ALERT: Microsoft Corporation Betrayal of Gays in Washington Stat

[Chicago Democrat]

As you probably know, Microsoft corporation has caved into pressure from the Rapture Right and withdrawn its support from Washington State's Gay Rights Legistlation. This legistlation went down in flames today.

If you dont know about it, read this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/22/national/22gay.html?hp&ex=1114228800&en=ae09414715e2bbf0&ei=5094&partner=homepage



Microsoft had been in the forefront of gay rights in both its corporate policies and by its support of pro gay rights legistlation.Now it seems like they are reversing these policies Show how you feel about this by calling Microsoft HQ at [phone].


oR EMAIL THEM AT:

http://www.microsoft.com/


Here's mine:
Dear Bill Gates and the Management of Microsoft Corporation,

I am so incredibly disappointed and angered by your decision to cave in to anti-gay fanatics and withdraw support for local gay rights legistlation. I am baffled. I am horrified. Why?


Why have you forsaken us?

What the heck happened here? We gay people have supported you for years and now when we are under attack you pull the rug out. I trying to avoid your products for a period of time until I see some kind of apology or appropriate gesture on the part of you or Microsoft. I am using Firefox and SBC browser now. I may even buy an apple. I am disappointed in you Mr. Gates. What a leader you have been in the past for all people and especially gay people.

Its really a sad, sad day for gay rights and freedom in general in America and the world.

Your sad, gay customer,

[juryrigged]

1. Word of advice. I have been hanging around for a few days before

posting and I noticed a lot of people post letter formats to copy and send out.

I worked in an office that was the recipient of MANY letters.

Common practice in Washington is as soon as two identical letters come in they and subsequent ones like them are trashed. Congess pays zero attention to letters that are mass produced.

YOu have to put your own together for better effect.

[mitchtv]

2. congress ignores them too?

the FCC doesn't

[Chicago Democrat]

3. No doubt, but Microsoft was very responsive and

was making a "database" of all the response they got.

As for form letters, a real letter is always better!

[AntiCoup2K4]

8. Yeah, but this is M$, so the database will probably be in Access....

...which means it will crash, and they'll lose all the records of response. :eyes:

[ianrs]

11. they ignored my email

if you don't include their European director's out of office reply.

[newyawker99]

6. Hi juryrigged!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[saltpoint]

4. Just sent two letters via email.

'Appreciate your posting this info and the prompt to contact Microsoft. They can afford to be trend-setters and modern corporate citizens and when they cave to the nutcase Right, they need to be slapped around a bit.

[Chicago Democrat]

5. thanks!

kik

[donsu]

7. " Dear Microsoft, you messed with the wrong faggots "

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/dear-microsoft-you-messed-with-wrong.html


Dear Microsoft,

You messed with the wrong faggots.

You thought you were avoiding a religious right boycott by suddenly going anti-gay. And you may have thought "hell, the evangelicals boycott us, the gays boycott us - we've got to choose one, and the evangelicals are in power, so let's screw the gays."

But here's something you didn't count on. You messed with the wrong faggots.

We have no intent of launching a boycott. Boycotts are hard to enforce, especially when dealing with a monopoly. And in any case, we're smarter than that. We're the country's top lobbyists, and grassroots activists, and lawyers, and politicos, and bloggers working in both Washingtons (state and DC).

When we fuck back, we don't launch boycotts. When we fuck back, we go for the jugular.

Changing the subject, we understand congratulations is in order. You're planning a 2.2 million square foot expansion of the Microsoft campus in Redmond over the next ten to twenty years. The expansion, we hear, would allow you to hire 10,000 to 20,000 new employees.

Well bully for you. You must be quite excited about that.

We also hear that you're going to need a lot of help - a LOT of help - from the state legislature and the Redmond city council to actually make that expansion work, for highway and road improvements and the like, and that not everybody is real happy about it.

Well, wouldn't it be funny if some really smart faggots decided to use their political expertise to kill any possibility of you getting the legislation and city council approval you need to make that expansion happen? And wouldn't it be even funnier if those same faggots went to your competitors and asked them to finance the entire campaign to kill your expansion?

It'd be pretty hard to hire those extra employees without your expansion, wouldn't it? I'm not saying anyone is going to do that to you. I'm just saying it would be really funny.

Best of luck to you with the legislative session over the next 24 hours.

Yours truly,

One of the faggots you just screwed
-snip-
-----------------------------

[Jesus Saves]

9. What was Microsoft afraid of?

Are these nuts gonna start patronizing the 'hippies' running Apple.

[funflower]

10. Not sure what Microsoft's responsibility is vis a vis legislation, but

as an employer and in their marketing efforts, they are incredibly responsive to diversity issues. I don't think this is a show; I think they really believe that diversity is the future and they will "win" by embracing that fact.

[Unions]

12. I have direct experience with them

I agree.

[Unions]

13. The apple threat doesn't work

X86 architecture (your "PC") can be used to run various other operating systems, and more than likely Microsoft has not sold any of the components in it. You should just say you'll be switching to linux for better effect.