By Richard Socarides
THE NEW YORKER - April 27, 2015
Twenty years ago, when I was
working as a White House special assistant in Bill Clinton’s
public-liaison office, one of my jobs was to rally support for the
President’s initiatives. We often focussed on enlisting business
leaders, among whom the President had many supporters, thanks in part to
the country’s robust economy. When I tried, however, to get C.E.O.s to
endorse Clinton’s gay-rights initiatives, which included expanding
protections against employment discrimination and hate crimes, as well
as appointing gays to positions requiring confirmation by the U.S.
Senate, I got very few takers. Just getting executives to a meeting
about gay rights was a challenge, even though they generally liked being
invited to the White House. I remember one event, in particular, for
which the best we could do was get a producer, who was gay himself, to
represent the business community. The entertainment industry was, at the
time, the only business that wanted anything to do with gay rights.
I was thinking about that era as I read the amicus brief
submitted to the Supreme Court in support of marriage equality by three
hundred and seventy-nine major businesses and business organizations,
in connection with four landmark cases that will be argued before the Court
on Tuesday. The brief has been signed by a broad cross-section of
American businesses from every region of the country, reflecting the
commitment to the issue that has evolved, at first slowly and then
forcefully, over the past decade. The brief argues that laws restricting
marriage to heterosexual couples “impose a significant burden on us and
harm our ability to attract and retain the best employees.”
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