A Company’s Stand for Gay Marriage In NC and Its Cost
In the months leading up to North Carolina’s vote this month to ban gay marriage, most of the state’s business leaders were conspicuously silent. While some executives spoke out against it as individuals, not one Fortune 500 company headquartered in North Carolina, including Bank of America, Duke Energy, VF Corporation and Lowe’s, opposed it.
But one company did: Replacements Limited, which sells silver, china and glassware, and is based in Greensboro. Its founder and chairman, Bob Page, is gay. The company lobbied legislators, contributed money to causes supporting gay marriage, rented a billboard along the interstate near its headquarters, and sold T-shirts at its showroom. Its experience may explain why no other for-profit company followed its example.
Bob Page, chief executive of Replacements, Ltd., in Greensboro, N.C., received hostile mail after lobbying against the state's ban on gay marriage.
Hostile letters and e-mails poured into the company from customers canceling their business and demanding to be removed from its e-mail list. “I understand that your company donated $250,000 or so to the effort to ban the marriage amendment,” read one. “I am very concerned that with an increased visibility and acceptance of the gay and lesbian lifestyle, one of my children, who would have grown up and been happily married to a husband, could be tempted to the lesbian lifestyle.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/business/replacements-limiteds-stand-for-gay-marriage-draws-repercussions.html?_r=1&
Send him a message if nothing else. He deserves to know that he has a lot of support and respect.
Page certainly has more courage than the other huge corporate momsers. They have infinitely larger resources, but they are chickenshits.
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