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Google Launches Global Marriage Equality Initiative

Posted by on Jul 9, 2012 in Business | 2 comments

While you were busy sleeping in on Saturday morning, Google was, ohhhhh I don’t know, kicking off a global initiative to make marriage equality legal in every single country the company has offices in across the planet.

Google is launching a new campaign called “Legalize Love” with the intention of inspiring countries to legalize marriage for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people around the world.

The “Legalize Love” campaign officially launches in Poland and Singapore on Saturday, July 7th. Google intends to eventually expand the initiative to every country where the company has an office, and will focus on places with homophobic cultures, where anti-gay laws exist.

Google’s Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe outlined the initiative at a Global LGBT Workplace Summit in London earlier today. “We want our employees who are gay or lesbian or transgender to have the same experience outside the office as they do in the office. It is obviously a very ambitious piece of work.

At the end of the day, the “Legalize Love” campaign is also good for Google’s business. “We operate in many countries and have a very globally mobile workforce. We have had a number of instances where we have been trying to hire people into countries where there are these issues and have been unable to put the best person into a job in that country,” said Palmer-Edgecumbe.

Google chose Singapore as a launch country for the initiative because of the gains being made there to position the country as the financial hub of the entire planet.

I’m having a difficult time naming a single other company working toward marriage equality on quite this scale. Surely Google will face resistance to their utopian vision from countries like say, China, but at least they are trying.

Seriously, can you think of anyone else putting their money where their mouth is on this scale?

(via dot429)