Adam Gifford: Microsoft bows to religious right on gays

The big news at Microsoft last week was not the hiring of Kiwi Chris Liddell as chief financial officer, but that it has abandoned its longstanding support for gay rights in the workplace.

The company encountered a firestorm of criticism after Seattle alternative newspaper the Stranger revealed Microsoft withdrew support for a bill before the Senate in its home state of Washington that would prohibit discrimination against gays in employment, housing and other areas. The bill failed by one vote.

What alarmed critics, including many Microsoft staff, was not just that the company was dropping a longstanding policy of tolerance, but the reasons for the switch.

It came after Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, a preacher on the right-hand side of the dial, met one of Microsoft's top lawyers, Brad Smith, in February.

Hutcherson asked why two Microsoft employees testified in favour of the bill before a Senate committee and threatened to organise a national boycott of Microsoft products unless the firm dropped its support for the bill.

Smith and other senior executives denied that Hutcherson had that much influence. In an email to staff, chief executive Steve Ballmer said a wider policy issue was at stake.

"It's appropriate to invoke the company's name on issues of public policy that directly affect our business and our shareholders, but it's much less clear when it's appropriate to invoke the company's name on broader issues that go far beyond the software industry - and on which our employees and shareholders hold widely divergent opinions," Ballmer wrote.

"We are a public corporation with a duty first and foremost to a broad group of shareholders."

Ballmer claimed the decision to take a "neutral" position was made in December by Microsoft's government affairs team when it put together its list of legislative priorities in Olympia for the year.

Hutcherson said that was untrue.

"Steve Ballmer, I believe, is a liar," he told the Stranger.

"The company lied, and the 'Black Man' [as Hutcherson is known round the church office] is not going to lie down and say 'okay.' Evidently they don't know that I won't keep my mouth shut about unrighteousness."

Calling for a boycott of Windows is like petitioning for the tide not to come in. What is the point? Microsoft doesn't fear boycotts, but something happened to make it change its stance on a deeply held principle.

Enter from stage right Ralph Reed.

Politics and gay rights site Americablog discovered that Microsoft pays US$20,000 ($27,450) a month to Century Strategies, a lobbying company run by Reed, a former head of the Christian Coalition and a leading light in the theocratic wing of the Republican Party.

Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that Reed is paid for his expertise in international trade and competition issues, and has never advised Microsoft on social policy.

Yeah, right.

International trade and competition isn't what Reed is known for. What he is known for is close links to the White House, including heading the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign in the southeast, and for his ability to mobilise large numbers of fundamentalist Christians to denounce politicians and public figures who don't toe the right line on issues such as abortion, gay rights and evolution.

The fact is, for Microsoft to build up its software empire the way it has, riding roughshod over friend and foe and politically neutralising the anti-monopoly judgments made against it required billions in legal and lobbying costs.

While Reed's US$20,000 a month is a drop in the bucket of what Microsoft spends on "government relations" at home and abroad, his presence on the payroll is an indication of how far Redmond will go for political expediency.

Microsoft doesn't just make software. It invests heavily in content and media. It wants to control not only how you see things, but what you see.

For the publisher of the Encarta encyclopaedia to align itself with someone who wants to stop the teaching of evolution does not inspire confidence. Not to mention the results one might expect from the MSN search portal or see on the MSNBC cable channel, home of far-right talk host Michael Savage.

Microsoft may be feeling under pressure. The European Union is pushing it to comply fully with last year's antitrust decision that it offer a version of Windows without Media Player and disclose all the interfaces to its PC and server operating systems, so rival vendors can compete in the workgroup server operating system market.

If it doesn't, the EU competition commission could fine it up to 5 per cent of its daily global turnover each day. That is on top of the US$497.2 million it was fined last year for abusing its market power.

Based on March-quarter revenue of US$9.6 billion, that means a fine of more than $5 million a day. That would put a hole in Liddell's bookkeeping.

When the EU decision came out last year, some leading US politicians threatened a trade war. That kind of support doesn't come without a cost.