Carlos A. Ball - The Queering of Corporate America: How Big Business Went from LGBTQ Adversary to Ally

ALSO BY CARLOS A . BALL

The First Amendment and LGBT Equality: A Contentious History

After Marriage Equality: The Future of LGBT Rights (editor)

Same-Sex Marriage and Children: A Tale of History, Social Science, and Law

The Right to Be Parents: LGBT Families and the Transformation of Parenthood

From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Lawsuits That Have Changed Our Nation

The Morality of Gay Rights: An Exploration in Political Philosophy

Cases and Materials on Sexuality, Gender Identity, and the Law (coeditor)

QUEER ACTION/QUEER IDEAS

a unique series addressing pivotal issues within the LGBTQ movement

BOOKS IN THE QUEER ACTION SERIES

Family Pride: What LGBT Families Should Know about Navigating Home, School, and Safety in Their Neighborhoods, by Michael Shelton

Out Law: What LGBT Youth Should Know About Their Legal Rights, by Lisa Keen

Come Out and Win: Organizing Yourself, Your Community, and Your World, by Sue Hyde

BOOKS IN THE QUEER IDEAS SERIES

Loves Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families, by Martha M. Ertman

Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal, by J. Jack Halberstam

God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, by Jay Michaelson

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, by Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock

Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law, by Nancy D. Polikoff

From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Lawsuits That Have Changed Our Nation, by Carlos A. Ball

At the Broken Places: A Mother and Trans Son Pick Up the Pieces, by Mary Collins and Donald Collins

For my children, Sebastian and Ema

IN APRIL OF 2019 President Donald Trumps White House ban on transgender troopsenforced against the advice of the Pentagon and many major military personnelwent into effect, reversing gains for the LGBTQ community that had advanced under Barack Obamas administration. Among the voices of protest was that of Erin Uritus, the CEO of Out & Equal: Workplace Advocates, a nonprofit that deals with LGBTQ workplace equality, who offered the following comment:

President Trump likes to portray himself as a successful business man. But on this issue, he is completely at odds with American businesses. Corporate America has figured out that standing up for trans rights is not just the right thing to do, it is also good business. Thats why a strong majority of the Fortune 500 companies offer protections based on gender identity and trans-inclusive healthcare options. The Trump Administration is trying to take America backwards. The good news is that Main Street wont let him succeed.

If you were to ask anyone involved in the gay liberation movement or early LGBTQ rights movement of the early 1970s if the words corporate America would ever be used positively in a statement on LGBTQ rights, they would be shocked and probably appalled. Capitalism, corporate entities, and many aspects of consumerism were understood to be antithetical to liberation. But many things can change over half a century.

The LGBTQ movement in the United States has developed in stages over seventy years. While always a continuous movement, each stage had different political aims and tactics from the previous incarnation. Early homophile groups in the 1950s, such as the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, called for social justice based on combating injustice, legal reform, and promoting healthy and affirming sexual identities. In 1969, after the Stonewall riots, the gay liberation movement emerged and embraced radical stances including feminism and combating social inequality, racism, imperialism, and capitalism. A few years after this, an LGBTQ rights movement emerged that was less radical but more broad-based and focused on legal reform, acceptance, and social equality.

Carlos Balls The Queering of Corporate America finds its roots in each of these movements, although, for the most part, it is located in the contemporary LGBTQ rights movement of the last few decades. Balls breathtaking thesis is that as the LGBTQ rights movement demanded equality in the corporate worldfor political support, jobs, visibility, and basic human decencyit was capitalism, commerce, and advertising, that slowly morphed into entities that, in many ways, supported queer people and queer issues.

It is easy to label this as a case of strange bedfellows making politicscapitalism is usually not seen as a benefactor of progressive politicsbut Ball makes the intriguing and vital argument that this merging of the interests of LGBTQ rights and commercial interests was not only productive for all concerned but logical and inevitable.

Charting the fascinating history of how activists within and outside major corporations lobbied and fought for changes in hiring, benefits, and nondiscrimination, Ball makes the case thatas at certain other times in US historycorporations were understood to be able to work for the common good, and even social justice, and not just the bottom line.

Balls historyaside from being highly informative and entertainingis an important examination of an aspect of LGBTQ history that has been, until now, completely overlooked. The history of the struggle for LGBTQ rights in the United States has been one of surprises and contradictions. The Queering of Corporate America is one more example of how the power of queerness dovetailed with other social forces to make America a better place for everyone.

Michael Bronski

SERIES EDITOR

I N 1968, AN LGBTQ RIGHTS GROUP in San Francisco tried to place an ad in the Yellow Pages published by the Pacific Bell Telephone Company. The phone company refused to publish the ad, claiming that the firm had an obligation to protect its customers from a filthy phone book and that the word homosexual was offensive to good taste. A few years later, Pacific Bell, which was then the largest private employer in California, responded to complaints of discrimination by queer activists by issuing a statement explaining that we do not knowingly hire or retain in our employment personsand this would include homosexualswhose reputations, performance, or behavior would impose a risk to our customers, or employees, or to the reputation of the company.... We are not in a position to disregard commonly accepted standards of conduct, morality, or life-styles. The company later disclosed that it stamped a special code on applications of suspected gay, lesbian, and bisexual job candidates as a way of internally flagging individuals who should be rejected due to their sexual orientation.

Almost fifty years later, the Arkansas legislature approved a measure that would have made it easier for businesses and others to discriminate against LGBTQ people as long as they did so for religious reasons. That same day, the CEO of Walmart, the largest private employer in Arkansas (as well as in the country and the world), issued a statement demanding that the Republican governor veto the legislation. The CEO explained that the proposed law encouraged discrimination and was therefore inconsistent with our core basic belief of respect for the individual... and does not reflect the values we proudly uphold. Two days later, the conservative governor and state legislature, under intense pressure from Walmart and other large businesses, modified the law in ways that no longer condoned discrimination against sexual minorities and transgender individuals.