• Without going into too much detail, my personal take on today's Microsoft kerfuffle is pretty simple: sometimes it's better to just STFU than to break company policy and distribute internal Microsoft communications to the press. Long story short, Microsoft has historically publicly backed the more-or-less yearly attempt [since 1975 - this year is the first time it actually made it to a vote, though] by the Washington state legislature to change existing law to proscribe discrimination against GLBTs in employment, etc.; this year, though, they didn't. This was a matter of public record, and went unreported as it was a pretty boring story.
Some Microsoft employee was so upset by this - or, rather, upset by this in combination with hearing office gossip that the change in position was due to a threat made to Microsoft by a local ex-Seahawk megachurch pastor who's in the habit of threatening as many people as possible with boycotts if they don't join his anti-gay-marriage crusade - that they printed out a bunch of internal Microsoft GLBT employee mailing list messages and went to The Stranger with 'em.
As a result, the bill didn't pass [possibly due to the sudden onslaught of publicity; it seemed like it was going to pass because no one in the media was paying attention up until yesterday], and now Microsoft looks really, really lame - even for Microsoft - for being a bunch of pantywaists who backed down the minute a low-rent Christian fundamentalist threatened a national boycott if they didn't drop support for anti-discrimination legislation.
It's like they forgot they're a monopoly, and stuff, you know? [Kidding.]
It was still pretty damn cheesy of Microsoft to drop support for HR 1515, though.
Not as cheesy as the two Democrats who helped vote it down in the Senate, though. [The bill failed by one vote.]
