Steve jobs is gay

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There’s a certain logic here: man-on-man sex must be so vile as to be unthinkable (straight porn suggests that lesbian sex is more than thinkable, as long as it doesn’t involve actual lesbians who know what they’re doing).

That sounds dangerously close to liberalism and tolerance.

So I send this warning to Russia’s hard-liners: don’t mess with Apple. The Jobs statue incident removes the last defense of the bigot:  apparently, it is no longer ok to say “Some of my best friends are gay.” (OK, Jobs didn’t really have friends, but the point is still the same).

Gay Icons

Yet dismantling the Jobs statue involves a much larger, more powerful minority in Russia than the LGBT community: owners of iPhones and iPads.

Under the Tim Cook regime, it’s unlikely that all Grindr downloads will be replaced with a new “No Homo” app.

Let us instead recall just how much Apple and Putin’s Russia have in common. Certainly, it does have features that might set off a sophisticated gaydar (now equipped with WiFi). The video below was Apple’s addition to the project which cumulatively generated thousands of contributions from celebrities, corporations, and individuals across the globe.

The video below features a number of nameless Apple employees, but does include a prominent appearance by Randy Ubilos, Apple’s head of video applications who often takes the state to introduce the latest version of iMovie or Final Cut Pro. 

Of course, Apple is hardly alone in its support of gay rights.

Apple consumers are an unlikely target for the next wave of official demonization (“When they came for the gays, I did not speak out, because I wasn’t gay. A tax break which was originally slated for Apple was subsequently taken away after Williamson County expressed disapproval of Apple’s equal rights policy for gays.

But the homophobic crusade has already extended to warnings about rainbows in children’s books, so anything is possible.

By the time the world community rushed to the defense of Russian LGBT people, the damage was already done. Especially when compared with an old-fashioned BlackBerry. The statue doesn’t actually violate Russia’s gay propaganda law, but its removal shows one of the law’s worst consequences:  it is an incitement to take every opportunity to affirm that LGBT people are anathema.

Previous versions only had heterosexual couples.

What’s more, the Human Rights Campaign Buyer’s Guide in 2012 gave Apple a perfect score with respect to its treatment of LGBT employees and overall workplace equality. And again, Apple isn’t alone here – a number of other prominent tech companies also received a perfect score, including AT&T, CISCO, Dell, Microsoft, Google, and Nokia.

Apple won’t compromise on equal health benefits

In the early 90’s, Apple was set to build a huge $80 million office complex in Round Rock, Texas.

Other tech giants such as Google, Adobe, Facebook, and Microsoft have long been ardent supporters as well.

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If the iPhone is to be defended from such nasty insinuations, we have to do it ourselves.

Both have been the object of a serious cult of personality, and both are notoriously undemocratic in their leadership style. Apple shocked the tech world early on by preventing a foreign company from corrupting the iPhone’s (moral) code when it refused to allow Adobe Flash. This follows on the heels of a declaration by the country’s most famous homophobe, legislator Vitaly Milonov,  that Cook should be banned from Russia, because, among other things, “sodomites" spread Ebola.

If it weren’t clear enough before, this latest expression of anti-gay hysteria demonstrates how far the attempts to whip up a moral panic have drifted from considerations of what actual LGBT community members are doing with their members.

I spent years waiting for Apple to make something like it. After a couple of bizarre weeks where I attended meetings all day filled with amazing people and amazing technology, knowing that at any minute I would have to leave, HR informed me that they’d talked the insurance company into providing special coverage. Some of the other companies include Facebook, Intel, Nike, Xerox, Oracle, Qualcomm, eBay, and Zynga.

“No matter how welcoming the corporate culture, it cannot overcome the societal stigma institutionalized by Proposition 8 and similar laws,” the companies will argue.

Apple also went so far as to issue a statement to All Things D, noting that “Apple strongly supports marriage equality and we hope the Supreme Court will declare the law unconstitutional.”

With the Supreme Court set to begin hearing arguments on the issue on March 26, it’s perhaps a good time to look back at how Apple and Steve Jobs have long been champions of equal rights for gays.

First off, it’s worth noting that when Proposition 8 was first put on the California ballot back in 2008, Apple donated $100,000 to fight it.

In a statement posted on its website at the time, Apple noted:

Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation.

Apple, of course, wasn’t the only Silicon Valley entity to fight against Prop 8.

Now there can be an entire constellation of “gay” behaviors and attributes that don’t have anything to do with sex. At the time, residents in the community even took to wearing pins which read, “Just Say, No! An Apple today will take family values away.” 

Apple officials said [..] that as a matter of both principle and economics the company would not build on the 128-acre site in Williamson County unless the tax break is restored, and Gov.

Ann W. Richards was left pleading with the company to look at other sites in Texas. Where Putinists praise Russia’s “spiritual underpinnings” while decrying attempts to import foreign “cultural values,” Apple is famous for treating its technological ecosystem as a walled garden:  only Apple decides what apps can run on its precious operating system, and only Apple can be trusted to protect its followers from infection by foreign viruses.

Russia bans gay propaganda.

Only now do I understand why that didn’t happen:  even then, Apple was playing for the other team.

But just how gay is the iPhone? Now that is a straight phone.