There are Puritans everywhere, even gay ones, but if they insist on making their personal agendas a part of the struggle for equal GLBT rights, they are only going to divide the movement.

I agree with the “crawl back under your rock” commenter.

Just look at the list of companies and for many of them you should be able to quickly link them to one or more large scale, high body count (dead or diseased), events.

Seriously.

Boeing – You think the plane on the 6pm News that slammed to the ground was made by Acme and it’s sole passenger was Wiley Coyote? No, and given the high numbers of GLBT people who travel for work, using “high disposible income” to travel, etc. the heterosexual community to queer community member death toll ratio would be just as off. And of course there are the airlines that use Boeing airplanes so I won’t even go there as it is redundant, but just realize there are a large number of GLBT employees for airlines, so even if Wiley Coyote is the sole passenger on an ACME plane, there is most likely a flight attendant and a pilot on board as well. Oh, lets not forget that Boeing is also listed as the 13th largest source of air pollution and responsible for 11% of greenhouse gases being pumped into our air.

Dow Chemical and DuPont – Do I even need to mention how many people they have poisoned through contaminated dumping and poor product manufacturing? Dow Chemical gave us Napalm (high powered explosive) and Agent Orange (Vietnam, chemical warfare). Not to mention DBCP, the fumigant/pesticide which made their own workers sterile, that they THEN proceeded to sell the recalled products to Dole Foods? And DuPont, the company that designed/built/operated the Hanford Site as part of the Manhattan project, leaving behind 53 MILLION gallons of HIGH LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE? Oh and that waste wasn’t cleaned up, it’s still sitting there, you know, in South Carolina, our backyard.

PG&E – two words, Erin Brockovich. Yes, the movie was about PG&E. Really I’m not making this up, regardless of it’s impact on the GLBT community, do you really want them on a list celebrating great companies to work for given their carelessness and negligence toward human life? Yes I know it was a movie and that of course their was some license taken with the facts, but still, even at it’s most basic components, it’s a horrific reality.

Anheuser Busch, Coors, and Coca Cola – Given Lee’s own representation of GLBT lifestyle choices (going to bars) do you really think they are there just to smoke and drink water? NO! How many deaths still occur each year due to alcohol? Drunk driving, chriossis of the liver, are these ringing any bells for you? And let us not forget the dear, sweet Coca Cola corporation and all of their lovely work with COCAINE as a product additive. Nor should we forget their work at fattening up America, as how many of us carry one of their products non-stop through the day in order to keep our caffeine high going? Given we are so likely to spend our times in bars, exactly what do you think it is that keeps us going through the day after spending all night on a drinking binge?

All of the Pharmaceutical companies are not without their own sordid and demonic tales of targeted products. As well as the sheer greed of pushing products through mainstream television advertising, preying on a public full of hypochondriacs, all looking for a quick fix for their problems, and a health care system that is too taxed and all to happy to write a prescription and get you to go away. And with a very targeted look at Pfizer, the loving company who gave us “the little blue pill”. When it comes to death and suffering, what group do you think took the biggest quantities of Viagra?

And the list goes on and on, these are just the companies that stand out to me, with notable and highly memorable instances of unbelievable greed, stupidity, and lack of care and concern for human life. Or more importantly the events that they have been responsible for. Using a surgeons scalpel to attack RJ Reynolds is very short sighted and can only be done in a vacuum, ignorant of the effects of many of the other companies on the list and the harm they have caused our global society. And to argue that they need to be removed due to their “harmful effects” would be to do so unfairly, if we can tolerate a little Napalm, Agent Orange, Hexavalent Chromium, Alcohol, Viagra, Greenhouse Gases, Nuclear Waste, and Cocaine, why not a little cigarette smoke and Cancer?