Trillium Asset Management's Position

Recommendation on Disney ballot question No. 9 – Ex-Gay Nondiscrimination Policy (2010 DEF 14A)

Since 1995, Trillium Asset Management Corporation has championed the cause of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender)-inclusive corporate nondiscrimination policies at numerous companies.

PFOX’s shareholder proposal is, ironically, a mirror image of the shareholder resolutions that our firm has proposed, which seek to add the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” to corporate nondiscrimination and non-harassment policies. However, the two populations – LGBT and “ex-gay” – do not occupy analogous situations in the workplace or in society.

LGBT advocates can point to numerous, statistically reliable studies documenting workplace discrimination, and numerous court decisions that have upheld claims of anti-LGBT discrimination.* The ex-gay community has not provided evidence of any such widespread discrimination.

If one accepts PFOX’s assertion that “ex-gay” is a sexual orientation, then its shareholder proposal is unnecessary because ex-gays are already protected against discrimination by Disney’s existing policy, which specifically names sexual orientation as a protected category. This is also the case if an ex-gay person regards him- or herself as having a heterosexual orientation. Disney’s policy does not protect the LGBT population exclusively; “sexual orientation” implicitly includes heterosexual orientation as well.

PFOX’s statement in support of its shareholder resolution claims that “the Superior Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that ex-gays are a legally protected class under sexual orientation and thus protected from discrimination under the D.C. Human Rights Act.” This is not borne out by a closer reading of the court’s decision, according to the blog ExGayWatch:

It is important to note that the court did not make the determination that ex-gays do or do not constitute a protected group under the Human Rights Act, only that immutability could not be used as an exclusionary factor. PFOX has carried this, and the entire ruling, way beyond any proportion of fact.

Their analysis can be found here.

In summary, it is our opinion that the PFOX resolution is an attempt to trivialize the real, documented, and in some cases institutionalized (e.g., “don’t ask, don’t tell”), discrimination faced by the LGBT minority by attempting to equate it with the apparent social discomfort felt by ex-gays. However, any actual or perceived discrimination that results from one’s ex-gay status is already covered by Disney’s policy.

We therefore recommend a vote against this resolution.