REI Stands For Marriage Equality

Add them to the growing list: REI, the outdoor retailer founded by a group of Pacific Northwest mountaineers in 1938, has come out strong for marriage equality in a blog post that CEO and President Sally Jewell wrote to REI’s 11,000 employees.

REI is taking a position in support of marriage equality—an issue that is important to the co-op as an inclusive organization and a welcoming place to work and do business.  A referendum on this issue will come before Washington State voters in November after passage through the Washington State Legislature earlier this year; marriage equality is also gaining momentum nationally.

Why is this important to the co-op?  Let me begin my answer with a personal perspective. A few weeks ago, my husband Warren and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary.  We’ve been on a journey through life together since our first date on my 18th birthday, raising our two children, changing jobs, moving to various places, and witnessing the challenges and joys of our relationship and those of our parents, three of them through end-of-life.

For heterosexual couples, it is very easy to take for granted the legal and societal benefits of marriage—health care benefits, retirement benefits, insurance, death benefits, healthcare decisions, child-rearing and custody, and many more, not to mention the meaning of the commitment of marriage that was so vivid to us as we introduced each other as husband or wife for the first time.  As executrix of my mother’s estate, the legal benefits of marriage in estate and health issues became even clearer to me over the past year.

Marriage equality is important to the co-op because the benefits, legal clarity and societal understanding that Warren and I have enjoyed these past 34 years should be available to any two people who want to express their love and make a permanent commitment to each other that is so clearly provided for in the legal definition of marriage.

When I joined REI in 2000, I realized what it was like to work in a place that was inclusive of people without regard to their sexual orientation. This was not the case early in my career as an engineer, nor in the 19 years I spent in banking.  In those years, I witnessed the challenge that my colleagues experienced—where seemingly simple questions about relationships, children, or even weekend activities could become delicate and difficult to answer, because being “out” was dangerous to one’s career.

I am proud of the inclusive environment that REI creates for our LGBT teammates and customers, and recognize that this is a continuing journey for all of us as we strive to be increasingly inclusive across all of the dimensions of diversity. The investment we have made in inclusion training across the organization is an important step in this journey.

The Board, Leadership Forum and I are committed to ensuring that we continue to create an environment where people can be themselves and feel welcome at REI, including respecting religious and political diversity. I want to ensure that our colleagues and customers who have beliefs that run counter to the position the co-op is taking on this issue feel respected in their right to disagree.

My own journey in understanding and coming to this position on marriage equality has been shaped by thoughtful, heartfelt discussions with people who have held a variety of differing perspectives.  I encourage you to engage each other in a discussion, practicing our core value of respect—“we listen to and learn from each other.”

Sixteen years from now, when I expect to be celebrating my 50th wedding anniversary, I sincerely hope that there will be millions more of a new generation for whom 50 years of marriage will become a possibility through these changes in our legal system.

I invite your reflections and thoughts on this blog post.

Warmly,

Sally

Thanks Sally, for understanding that equality for all really should mean for all. But I do wonder how those folks that disagree with Sally Jewell's position will react. See, when they say they are against marriage equality and we react, they say we're attacking their religion freedoms, or their Freedom of Speech, but when someone like Sally Jewell says she supports marriage equality, they trot out their religious wingnuttiness and try to drive her out of business.
It's equality people and really has nothing to do with the Bible. It's the laws of this country, and quite contrary to what Paul Ryan believes, God did not write the laws for the United States.

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Good News Friday: Jeff & MacKenzie Bezos Give $2.5 Million in Support of Same-Sex Marriage

This is the tale of the 1% standing up for the rights of the, and I’m guessing here, the 10%

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, and his wife, MacKenzie, are donating $2.5 million to help pass that same-sex marriage referendum in Washington. This makes the couple among the largest financial backers of marriage equality rights in the entire country.

And I say Bravo and Brava!

The donation has doubled the money available to Referendum 74 proponents, who are calling it a “game-changing gift that gives them a fighting chance” in November.

Zach Silk, the campaign manager for Washington United For Marriage, says, “To get this from a straight, married couple sends a powerful message that marriage is seen as a fundamental question of fairness.”

 Thursday in an interview.

Bezos joins a growing list of heterosexual business executives—like Bill Gates and Steven Ballmer--who are replacing wealthy gay people as the some of the biggest donors to the movement behind marriage equality. Those two men each gave $100,000, but with his seven-figure gift, Bezos has now set the bar even higher.

Jennifer Cast, one of Amazon’s earliest employees and a lesbian mother of four, and a now a fundraiser for the pro-referendum effort, emailed Bezos recently about marriage equality.

In her e-mail, Cast asked Bezos to understand the importance of the issue to her and her longtime partner: “I want to have the right to marry the love of my life and to let my children and grandchildren know their family is honored like a ‘real’ family. We need help from straight people. To be very frank, we need help from wealthy straight people who care about us and who want to help us win.”

Cast says she gad no idea how Bezos would respond until she received an email back from him:

 “Jen,” the e-mail said, “this is right for so many reasons. We’re in for $2.5 million. Jeff & MacKenzie.”

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are an extremely private couple, and declined, through a public relations representative, to be interviewed about their donation, but their gift speaks volumes. Loudly.

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Two Faiths .... Two Views

One of the problems I think we have as a country is that we tend to lump all people into categories. I mean, all gay men aren’t sex pigs; all Black men aren’t deadbeat dads, all Mexicans aren’t illegal, and all religions aren’t the same. And that’s what we have here: a tale of two faiths.

It seems that, last week, the General Assembly of the nation's largest Presbyterian denomination voted against a proposal that would have paved the way toward the church allowing same-sex weddings in their midst.

The proposal would have changed the church's Book of Order to define marriage as between "two people" but after the vote—and the narrow victory—it will keep the definition of marriage as between "a man and a woman."

"God, we are a divided church," said the Reverend Neal Presa, a New Jersey pastor and the General Assembly moderator, said while guiding church members in prayer after the vote.

And, in light of thatvote by the General Assembly—which is made up of pastors and lay people—pro-same sex marriage activists must wait another two years until the church's next national meeting to make marriage-related proposals.

On the other hand,

On the other hand, the United Methodist Church in the Northwest has set itself at with its parent denomination by endorsing Referendum 74 and asking voters to make Washington the nation’s seventh state to enact same-sex marriage.

The issue of marriage equality has divided much of Washington's faith community. While Episcopalians, Methodists and the ecumenical Faith Action Network have come out for same-sex marriage, the state’s Catholic bishops and many fundamentalist churches opposed it.  Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, apparently unaware of that whole Separation of Church and State thingy, even asked his parishes to serve as collection centers for signatures on the referendum petition. Still, many Seattle and Tacoma parishes refused the Archbishop’s request and even sent contingents from Catholics for Marriage Equality and Mormons for Marriage Equality to march in the Seattle Pride Day parade.

And while the United Methodist Church in the Northwest has come down on the side of equality, all is not the same among all Methodists. The parent church, at its convention, rejected a change in church doctrine, which asserts that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.”  Gays and lesbians are officially not allowed to serve as clergy, and the celebration of holy unions is prohibited by church law.

But the Reverend Sandy Brown, at Seattle First United Methodist Church, will not be silent: “Our church will not be deterred by our denomination’s heartless stand on homosexuality. We are out and proud to stand with our LGBT families, friends and neighbors.”

So, while all gays are not alike, or all Black men, Mexicans, women, and people of faith, the simple fact remains that in this country all men are supposed to be created equal. And some churches, some people of faith, as well aware of that, and are doing something about it.

Presbyterians Vote Against Marriage Equality

Methodists Endorse Marriage Equality