From dbs@apple.com Sun Dec 19 20:18:14 1993 David Ramirez Subject: AFTER THE CLOSET (SJ MERCUR Mail*Link(r) SMTP AFTER THE CLOSET (SJ MERCURY ARTICLE) . Hi all, Thanks to the generosity of James Mitchell, the Business Editor of the San Jose Mercury, I have permission to distribute the following text from their Mercury Center at America Online. This article about Domestic Partners Benefits appeared in Monday's edition. Enjoy! Please include their copyright on any further redistribution. ---Daniel--- PS: If you want to get the great color pictures, you'll have to get the original article. :-) Daniel Sonnenfeld Configuration Management Apple Online Services Apple Computer Internet: dbs@apple.com AppleLink: SONNENFELD (h)b2(b4) c(+)d(+) g(+) s++ k+ m+ t- SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS Copyright 1993, San Jose Mercury News DATE: Monday, November 29, 1993 PAGE: 1E EDITION: Morning Final SECTION: Business Monday LENGTH: 57 in. Long ILLUSTRATION: Photos (4) SOURCE: By Michelle Levander, Mercury News Staff Writer AFTER THE CLOSET MORE GAYS AND LESBIANS ARE COMING OUT, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THEIR PROBLEMS ARE OVER AT WORK SLUMPED at a table, the senior human resource executive gulped on his beer and looked out at the bright lights of one of the biggest bashes of the year for the nation's gay and lesbian community. As couples swayed to the music on the lawn at Apple Computer Inc., he held up his glass. ''I'm straight,'' he said abruptly. ''I'll never understand those people.'' Even at their own party, members of the gay and lesbian community can be seen as outsiders. That casual rejection -- at an October party in Cupertino celebrating the growing clout of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force -- illustrates some of the resistance faced by gay and lesbian activists as they try to gain recognition in one of the most progressive corners of the corporate world -- Silicon Valley. Nowhere have some of these contradictions come to the surface more clearly than at Apple -- a firm that is gaining a reputation as a national pioneer on gay and lesbian rights. The Cupertino company is also a place where employees had to fight a long, frustrating battle to gain new benefits earlier this year. Gay activists have made their most dramatic inroads in Silicon Valley, successfully fighting for the same health care benefits for their*partners*as those granted married couples and for corporate policies that prohibit bias on the basis of sexual orientation. More than half of the nation's 30-odd companies that offer*domestic*partner benefits are high-technology firms -- and most are based in the Bay Area. But corporations that often pride themselves on their hip, young California image also have thrown up unexpected barriers to gays and lesbians as they try to be included in the corporate world's definition of diversity. And other obstacles have come from within the gay community itself as men and women struggle with fears about demanding equal treatment at work. Some agonize over taking a stand that could cost them their careers, and others, still in the closet, have worked against the effort to avoid being branded as gay. ''Most heterosexuals have no idea of what guts it takes to put your name on the line,'' said Frederick Parsons, a Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. employee who just won a three-year battle to have a gay group recognized as an official company organization. ''You have to come out an additional step to do that, and once you do that you realize there's no turning back. When we first approached the president of the company, we had no idea what response we'd get.'' At the heart of the matter is the hostile social environment facing gay and lesbian activists. ''Overt racism and prejudice against most groups based on race, religion, gender or national origin, is not only illegal, but socially very unacceptable in most business settings,'' said David Blumberg, a San Francisco venture capital consultant active in the gay community. ''This is not the case with gays and lesbians, since most firms do not have 'sexual orientation' clauses in their employment policies. Most governmental institutions do not enforce such policies, and social mores view homosexuality with fear and loathing.'' Commitment by Apple At Apple, company officials have gone further publicly than those at almost any other company to make clear their commitment to treating gay and lesbian employees as equals. In the last two months, Apple has sponsored a gala event for a national gay and lesbian organization and raised the banner for tolerance when Texas officials threatened to withhold tax breaks because of the company's benefits policy. Yet, winning the benefits now being so publicly touted as a part of the Apple philosophy was a struggle. The company's gay and lesbian employee group began its effort to get health care benefits extended to*partners*in 1990. But the initial meetings of a group formed by human resources official Santiago Rodriguez went nowhere, in part because his department became sidetracked by a mass layoff, Rodriguez said. A year and a half later, Apple Lambda, the employee group, formed its own family needs task force. Lambda lobbies The group conducted its own detailed research and began lobbying human resources officials on the costs and benefits of*domestic*partner benefits. Members were trying to counteract what they said seemed like dangerously erroneous information about the exorbitant costs of the benefits. The company, employees said, assumed that large numbers of gay and lesbian employees would enroll and that Apple would be obligated to offer the benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples. Neither assumption was true. ''I don't know when human resources did their analysis,'' said Daniel Sonnenfeld, who led the task force. ''We, the Family Needs Task Force, kept asking them for the data they used so we could refute it and were told sorry, that's confidential information. We can't share it with you. So when we brought up our numbers, it was hard to compare with theirs.'' The employee group assembled a presentation worthy of a marketing campaign for a new product announcement, complete with a professionally done video that featured four employees talking about why health benefits would make them feel like full corporate citizens. In April 1992, the group also presented management with a report summarizing its philosophy and research on costs. ''Defining family by using criteria that gay and lesbian families can never meet -- no matter how long we live together, no matter how hard we work to support each other -- is unfair to gay and lesbian workers,'' the report stated. ''In the abstract, it sends a clear message that Apple values us less than our heterosexual co-workers.'' Brad Zaller, the co-chair of Apple Lambda, said, ''We felt what we were doing should have been done by the benefit departments. Basically, we were doing the whole thing, research, meetings with company officials. We were the driving force pushing*domestic*partners*for most of the fight.'' No resistance, no action The group never encountered any overt prejudice, just unenthusiastic responses and doubts, members said. It was something like punching a pillow. There was no resistance but no action, employees recalled. As time dragged on, Lambda members watched with dismay as Lotus Development Corp., Levi Strauss & Co., Borland International Inc. and Silicon Graphics Inc. extended similar benefits to gay and lesbian employees. Many had hoped that Apple would be the leader. Much of the employees' frustration focused on a high-ranking human resources official who initially led the in-house committee on*domestic**partners.*The official, a number of employees said, was reluctant to advocate*domestic*partners*because he was in the closet about his sexuality and was unwilling to be closely identified with a gay cause. Asked about these comments, the official volunteered to speak publicly and allow his name to be used by the Mercury News. Santiago Rodriguez, the company's director of multicultural programs, said he has never been one to publicly announce his sexuality or adopt an ideological agenda. But he said he has never hidden the truth from co-workers or superiors. Attitude misinterpreted That attitude, he said, was misinterpreted by gay and lesbian employees. In many meetings behind the scenes, he lobbied often for providing Lambda with answers. The delays, he said, were frustrating for everyone. ''I will say uncategorically this wouldn't have come through if I hadn't pushed it. I was the one that brought it up with management again and again because we kept running into walls.'' Rodriguez said he believes much of the delays could be explained by the lack of extensive data at other companies on the costs and an unresolved legal issue for California companies seeking to offer the benefit solely to same-sex*partners.* ''How many other companies have done this? It was virgin territory,'' he said. ''It was clearly breaking new ground, and we needed champions within the company willing to do it and look at it in a rational way.'' But for members of the Apple employee group, it appeared that no one in a position of authority was willing to go to bat for the issue. By July 1992, three months after its report, the Lambda group saw some progress. The company announced it would offer a number of inexpensive benefits to gay and lesbian employees such as bereavement leave benefits and access to the health center. Controversy within Apple Extending even those inexpensive benefits prompted controversy within Apple. On the company's electronic bulletin board, many employees spoke in favor of the policy but others denounced Apple for condoning what they said was an ''immoral'' or ''perverse'' lifestyle. Human resources took the unprecedented step of cutting off the electronic debate. But, human resources officials still told Lambda the timing wasn't right to ask the board of directors to approve a new expense -- health care benefits for*domestic*partners,*the heart of its campaign. By the fall of 1992, Lambda employees had grown tired of going through channels. They requested a meeting with Apple Chairman John Sculley. At about the same time, Elizabeth Birch, the company's chief litigator and a longtime lesbian activist, began thinking about approaching Sculley about the issue when it seemed Lambda's efforts were foundering. It was a risky move for Birch, because it meant stepping outside her official role as chief counsel to lobby for a personal cause. ''Gay and lesbian people have got to constantly juggle the issue of should I be brave today or should I play it safe,'' said Birch, who co-chairs the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce. ''Whether legitimately or not, there is always a fear that you could be jeopardizing your career.'' Research begins Meanwhile, the human resources department began its first solid research on the issue of*domestic*partners*and hired an outside consultant to come up with cost estimates. The meeting between Apple Lambda and Sculley was scheduled for January. Events on the national and local scene conspired for a swift and favorable resolution. Sculley, still flush with the victory of President Clinton in January, was ready to listen to Birch when it came to gay rights, a prominent issue in the Clinton campaign and one he had supported in the past. Tom Rielly, a gay executive at Supermac Technology Inc., a company with strategic ties with Apple, also made a brash move and brought up the issue of Apple's*domestic*partners*benefits in the middle of a business meeting with Sculley and other executives. At the end of the meeting, Rielly, a dapper man who sports multicolored Parisian glasses, leaned forward and told Sculley that he had a chance to make a great symbolic gesture. Sculley briefed Unknown to gay and lesbian activists, Rodriguez and Apple Vice President Kevin Sullivan also met with Sculley, briefing him on their cost analysis and a recommendation to offer the benefit. When Sculley stepped into the meeting with Apple Lambda in January, he announced that there was no moral or financial reason for the company to withhold its support. His announcement was met with a standing ovation and tears. Two days later, the directors approved the benefit. Since the benefit began in July, only 40 employees have signed up for it, half of 1 percent of Apple's U.S. workforce of 8,000. The benefit has proved to have more symbolic than practical value for gay and lesbian employees, whose*partners*often get health care through their own jobs. ''It fundamentally transformed my feelings about being at Apple,'' Birch said. ''If we hadn't gotten it, it would have affected my ability to make the deepest commitment to the company.'' Sonnenfeld, who attributes the group's success to the individual risk- taking by gay and lesbian employees, said, ''We screamed long enough and something finally happened.'' ''Apple has the saying that Apple is changing the world,'' Sonnenfeld said. ''It's wonderful to be working for a company that's working on changing the world.'' CAPTION: PHOTO: TOM VAN DYKE -- MERCURY NEWS Daniel Sonnenfeld, left, has benefits at Apple that include Frank Tatko, right. (color) PHOTO: The two are pictured in Sonnenfeld's office, below. (color) PHOTO: CAP CARPENTER -- MERCURY NEWS Elizabeth Birch, Apple's chief litigator, pushed for*domestic-partner* benefits. (color) PHOTO: TOM VAN DYKE -- MERCURY NEWS Daniel Sonnenfeld, one of the principle gay activists at Apple who worked to get*domestic-partner*benefits for same-sex*partners,*attributed the success to risk-taking by gay and lesbian employees. KEYWORDS: GAY HOMOSEXUAL LESBIAN EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYEE RIGHT DISCRIMINATION END OF DOCUMENT.