I have to comment carefully here. But you should really read this article in the Stranger. It starts out this way:

In a move that angered many of the company’s gay employees, the Microsoft Corporation, publicly perceived as the vanguard institution of the new economy, has taken a major political stand in favor of age-old discrimination.

The Stranger has learned that last month the $37-billion Redmond-based software behemoth quietly withdrew its support for House bill 1515, the anti-gay-discrimination bill currently under consideration by the Washington State legislature, after being pressured by the Evangelical Christian pastor of a suburban megachurch. The pastor, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, met with a senior Microsoft executive in February and threatened to organize a national boycott of the company’s products if it did not change its stance on the legislation, according to gay rights activists and a Microsoft employee who attended a subsequent April 4 meeting where Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, told a group of gay staffers about Hutcherson’s threat. Hutcherson also unsuccessfully demanded that the company fire two employees who had testified in favor of the bill.

Unbelievable? Read this NYT story, which tells us, among other things:

“Our government affairs team made a decision before this legislative session that we would focus our energy on a limited number of issues that are directly related to our business,” said Mark Murray, a company spokesman. “That decision was not influenced by external factors. It was driven by our desire to focus on a smaller number of issues in this short legislative session. We obviously have not done a very good job of communicating about this issue.”

“We’re disappointed that people are misinterpreting those meetings,” he said.

But State Representative Ed Murray, an openly gay Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said that in a conversation last month with Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s senior vice president and general counsel, Mr. Smith made it clear to him that the company was under pressure from the church and the pastor and that he was also concerned about the reaction to company support of the bill among its Christian employees, the lawmaker said.

Really, what’s worse? Spinelessness, or lying about having a backbone. Where have you gone, fire-breathening monopoly that fought the whole US Goverment for years? I never thought I’d miss that Old Microsoft arrogance.

Can I get a shout-out from the non-anti-gay Christians at Microsoft? And who wants to go with me to Antioch Bible Church in Redmond on Sunday for a Big Gay Pray-In?

Once again, Americablog is proving itself indispensible…especially if you happen to care about all the ways we’re being made second class citizens by bigoted idiots and the chickenshit corporations that seem all too happy to do their bidding.