Everybody’s Business

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A disabled college student was bullied for posting about his transition. Meta removed his account

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A disabled college student is speaking out after conservative figures online bullied and mass reported him when he posted about his gender transition.  Micah Leroy, who ran the account known as “Disabled Trans Boy” on Instagram, became the subject of a right-wing hate campaign after he posted a video celebrating his double mastectomy, also know as top surgery. The 19-year-old has cerebral palsy, a group of neurological disorders that affect body movement and muscle coordination, which is the most common lifelong physical disability according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.  “It is important to note that nowhere in this definition does it […]

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GOOD ON THEM: Apple, Costco stand behind DEI programs

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At a time when many businesses are abandoning their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, Apple and Costco are standing behind theirs. Both are encouraging shareholders to vote against resolutions asking them to reevaluate their commitment to DEI. A shareholder resolution is a means by which those who hold stock in a company can seek to influence the company’s policies. Most are nonbinding and most do not receive a majority vote, as the bulk of shareholders usually vote among company lines. But if a resolution receives even 10 percent support, it’s hard for the company to ignore. The Apple and Costco resolutions were both submitted by National […]

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Google erases Pride Month from Calendar app

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The Google Calendar app has stopped mentioning various cultural observances, like LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Indigenous Peoples Month.  The company said that it wasn’t “sustainable” to keep mentioning these observances, but commenters accused Google of removing them in response to the recent right-wing pressure campaign against “diversity” efforts. “Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world,” Google spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld wrote in a statement to The Verge. “We got feedback that some other events and countries […]

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Target dropped DEI, so Minnesota’s largest Pride festival dropped Target’s sponsorship — and raised even more

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After Target made the decision to drop diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, Minnesota’s largest Pride festival decided to drop them as a sponsor. Now, Twin Cities Pride has more funding than they started with. Target issued a memo on Friday announcing the end of its three-year DEI goals, including its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) program and “all external diversity-focused survey’s including HRC’s Corporate Equality index.” The Human Rights Campaign effort, which provides benchmarks on corporate policies relevant to LGBTQ+ employees, previously gave Target a score of 100 percent, dubbing the company a “Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion.” In response, the largest Pride organization in Minnesota and the […]

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Elon Musk and other billionaires exploit LGBTQ+ hate for profit, GLAAD CEO tells Davos audience

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GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis took aim at Elon Musk during a panel discussion of business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, warning that his consolidation of power and influence is fueling attacks on LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups.  Speaking at the “Open Forum: Protecting LGBTQI+ Lives” on Thursday, Ellis tied Musk’s actions to a broader pattern of billionaires targeting vulnerable communities while enriching themselves. “We know that algorithms are where the money is made, and the hate algorithms are the better ones,” Ellis said. “What we’ve enacted is free speech for algorithms, not free speech for citizens. […]

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Meta Deletes Trans Themes From Messenger App

404 Media reports: Meta deleted nonbinary and trans themes for its Messenger app this week, around the same time that the company announced it would change its rules to allow users to declare that LGBTQ+ people are “mentally ill,” 404 Media has learned. Meta’s Messenger app allows users to change the color scheme and design of their chat windows with different themes. For example, there is currently a “Squid Game” theme, a “Minecraft” theme, a “Basketball” theme, and a “Love” theme, among many others. These themes regularly change, but for the last few years they have featured a “trans” theme and […]

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LGBTQ rights group reports progress at U.S. companies despite conservative backlash

A national rights group said Tuesday that more U.S. companies are providing strong benefits and protections to LGBTQ employees despite an ongoing effort by conservative activists to get high-profile brands to stop participating in the organization’s annual workplace report card. The education arm of the Human Rights Campaign released its latest Corporate Equality Index the day after McDonald’s became the latest big company to say it would no longer provide information for the annual evaluation of policies affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. Last year, Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson and other consumer brands that came under pressure said they would […]

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Meta employees speak out against new anti-LGBTQ+ & anti-DEI policies

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New policies from tech giant Meta are enabling bigots to claim that LGBTQ+ people have a “mental illness.” Concurrently, the company announced on Friday that it is ending its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) commitments, sparking backlash from queer employees. The first set of policy changes came on Tuesday, after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would be removing content moderators and fact-checkers and loosening restrictions on their hate speech policies. Meta’s new guidelines state, “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious […]

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Amazon removes ‘equity for Black people’ and ‘LGBTQ+ rights’ from company policies

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Amazon has quietly removed several policies from its public websites aimed at protecting workers, including “solidarity” pledges with its Black employees and health care benefits for transgender workers.  The pages were removed about a month ago, according to The Washington Post. The changes include several to policy, as well as department titles. A section previously called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is now “Inclusive Experiences and Technology,” and the section “advance DEI through technology” is now a pledge to “advance the employee experience.” One of the removed policies includes an outline of the gender-affirming carebenefits provided to employees under Amazon’s health care plan, which it said […]

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Meta’s new hate speech guidelines permit users to say LGBTQ people are mentally ill

Meta will allow its billions of social media users to accuse people of being mentally ill based on their sexuality or gender identity, among broader changes it made to its moderation policies and practices Tuesday. The company’s new guidelines prohibit insults about someone’s intellect or mental illness on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, as have previous iterations. However, the latest guidelines now include a caveat for accusing LGBTQ people of being mentally ill because they are gay or transgender.  “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and […]

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