The following is abstracted from materials provided by the publisher.
Grant Lukenbill, a nationally recognized authority on the gay and lesbian rights records of America's top corporations, has compiled this guide for gay and lesbian consumers, which will allow them to make purchasing decisions on everything from alphabet soup to silicon chips based on the manufacturer's record on gay and lesbian rights.
Before you buy that tube of toothpaste, do you know whether the manufacturer offers domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees? Before you buy a computer, do you know if the manufacturer makes donations to Religious Right groups who would deny gay men and lesbians basic civil rights?
For the first time, consumers can become activists with their dollars by taking advantage of Grant Lukenbill's expertise and exhaustive research into the gay and lesbian rights records of America's top corporations. Easy to use, with quick reference sections and indexing, consumers can make informed choices about banking, apparel, communications and technology, home furnishings, entertainment, food and beverage services, insurance, travel, utilities, and much more based on the companies' record on issues such as gay rights, ethical treatment of animals, environmental protection, and labor relations. Smart Spending is an invaluable tool for consumer activism.
Note from the Author
This is a book about reinforcing our pursuit of equality by building more strategic consumer and investor relationships with some of the world's most influential corporate powers. We can build these alliances by letting as many companies as possible know who we are, where we are, and what each of us really wants.
What do you want? Do you want to be targeted as a gay or lesbian consumer? Are you willing to buy from companies that advertise for your dollars? What about companies that don't acknowledge you? How do you feel about companies that constantly target you in advertising, but have less than progressive workplace policies?
As gay people, it's time to re-engineer our talents for sophistication, thrift and accountability. It's time to make the real facts more readily apparent in labor statistics, election returns and marketing reports…We must become the people whose story is always (not rarely) told in corporate diversity reports alongside race, religion, gender, and age…
We must also take a strong inventory of ourselves. We need to look more closely at what our money is really buying…
Companies do change once they hear from us. And therein lies the good news: business history has shown that no company can afford to be perceived as antigay, and plenty of companies will go out of their way to make sure they are not.
At the moment, however, there are far too many companies that have yet to realize our potential relationship to their long-term strength and vitality. This is where our sophisticated influence can come in, and why I wrote this book.
In the world of companies, like the world of politics, it takes people to lead people. But only leading people can run leading companies. And only informed gay consumers can know which companies are leaders and which are not, who to buy from and invest in, and who to reject.
Once armed with the facts, you'll be surprised how much information you can carry in your head when you go the grocery store, the mall, an insurance broker, an auto dealer, or your stock broker.
Use the information in this book to help yourself, your friends and your family begin finding and supporting gay friendly companies. Even companies with less than admirable policies are included in this book so you can know who to write to, and what to say, if you like their products but not their policies.
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