A group of Google employees is calling on the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors to drop their company’s sponsorship of Pride 2019 and bar the company’s official contingent from marching in the parade over the company’s anti-LGBTQ policies.
The employees told the board they are tired of waiting for Google to change its policies: “We have spent countless hours advocating for our company to improve policies and practices regarding the treatment of LGBTQ+ persons, the depiction of LGBTQ+ persons, and harassment and hate speech directed at LGBTQ+ persons, on YouTube and other Google products. Whenever we press for change, we are told only that the company will “take a hard look at these policies.” But we are never given a commitment to improve, and when we ask when these improvements will be made, we are always told to be patient.”
Add the employees: “We feel we have no choice but to urge you to reject Google’s failure to act in support of our community by revoking their sponsorship of Pride, and excluding Google from official representation in the Pride parade. If another official platform, YouTube, allows abuse and hate and discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons, then Pride must not provide the company a platform that paints it in a rainbow veneer of support for those very persons. On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, in a Pride celebration whose very slogan is “Generations of Resistance”, we ask you to join us in resisting LGBTQ+ oppression on the internet, and the subjugation of our right to equality in favor of calculated business concerns. The first Pride was a protest, and so now must this Pride be one.”
Read the full letter HERE.
