cover image The Queering of Corporate America: How Big Business Went from LGBTQ Adversary to Ally

The Queering of Corporate America: How Big Business Went from LGBTQ Adversary to Ally

Carlos A. Ball. Beacon, $28.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8070-2634-2

In this meticulous history, Ball (The First Amendment and LGBT Equality), a law professor at Rutgers University, writes eruditely on how the LGBTQ movement masterfully targeted, then conscripted, corporate America into a powerful ally in the fight for equality. The 1970s saw boycotts and antidiscrimination suits; Pacific Bell, then the largest employer in California, had an explicit policy not to hire “open homosexuals” because doing so would “disregard commonly accepted standards of conduct, morality, or lifestyles.” Yet by the mid-1980s it had implemented policies to accommodate HIV-positive employees in the workplace and was considered a “role model” for LGBTQ-friendly firms. The movement successfully pressed for benefits for domestic partners in the 1990s (an opening wedge toward legal recognition of same sex marriage). Today, tech companies such as Angie’s List, Apple, and Salesforce, but also traditional megacorporations such as General Mills and Merrill Lynch, have advocated for LGBTQ policies in the public (as opposed to just the private, corporate) sphere. This progression, Ball astutely notes, has led to an interesting paradox, wherein LGBTQ progressives find themselves embracing corporate America on these issues but confronting them on others, such as antiunion, antiregulatory, and antitax policies. He delivers both an insightful history and an excellent road map for any group seeking progressive social change. (Nov.)