Three Reasons Big Companies are Advocating for the Repeal of DOMA

The article Three Reasons Big Companies are Advocating for the Repeal of DOMA underlines the value of corporate LGBT networks to companies. They and their allies were responsible for 70 companies, firms, organizations, and municipalities filing a brief against the Defense of Marriage Act. The list includes names like BNY Mellon, CBS, Google, Microsoft, and Xerox.

DOMA is the law that makes it impossible for my wife and I - and thousands like us - to live in the United States. She as a US citizen and cannot sponsor me, even after 11 years of marriage, to live with her in the United States. The US federal government does not recognize our marriage and immigration law only allows married spouses to join their US citizen partners. Sounds crazy, doesn't it! It makes no sense to me and the thousands like us. For us the 'joyful business of love', as Anne Bligh, the Queensland premier so beautifully put it, is a reason to join and not separate people.

Corporate LGBT networks in the US have found even more reasons to demand the repeal of DOMA.

The three reasons are related to the costs, the employees and the clients.

Companies now have to actually go into employee backgrounds to discover if their marriage is to a person of the same sex or the opposite sex. HR has to spend time finding the few people who are married to a same-sex partner and exclude them from federal benefits. Sounds too crazy to believe, but there it is.

This has a cost not just to the company, but also to the employees. Gay and straight employees alike prefer equality at the work place. Certainly the employees in the 70 companies that signed on.
And then of course there is brand loyalty. 70 organizations have recognized that they want to show their market they value them.

In 2008 my MBA research on the value of corporate gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) networks was awarded a distinction. This is not just good news for me. My business college, Henley Management College (now part of Reading University) had never had a student researching the value of anything related to the gay community. Now they did, and they found the argument compelling that networks add value to companies.

My business NETSHEILA is about getting the networks you are in working for you. It is about bringing people together to understand the implications of the status quo on their lives, to building knowledge around that, and to working together to shift the status quo. NETSHEILA online and offline methodologies to do that. NETSHEILA is urgent about making this world work for all of us. In Europe, in Africa, in the USA, in Australia. Get in touch!