Apple has joined the league of high-powered American corporations including Facebook, Morgan Stanley, Intel, Microsoft, and others in support of gay marriage by signing on to two briefs set to be filed this week with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gay-marriage advocates have enlisted a group of U.S. companies including the above-mentioned ones in addition to dozens of Republicans who once held top government positions, Bloomberg reported.
They are now eying the White House as it has time until tomorrow to say whether the Obama administration would join the group of more than 60 companies pressing for legalization of gay marriage in the country.
"A call to make same-sex marriage a constitutional right would be a shift for Obama, an opponent when he ran for the White House in 2008. Even after announcing his support last year, he has said states should take the lead on the issue," the Bloomberg report said.
The Supreme Court is now in the process of analyzing the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, a 2008 initiative banning gay marriage. The group would argue that gay marriages are good for business as a ban in 41 states would harm workplace morale and negatively impact employee recruitment operations.
"No matter how welcoming the corporate culture, it cannot overcome the societal stigma institutionalized by Proposition 8 and similar laws," Orrick Herrington Sutcliffe, the legal organization representing the group said.
A slew of other technology companies are also supporting the same-sex marriages, including Zynga, Oracle, eBay, Qualcomm, Panasonic, and NCR in addition to other publicly traded company such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Alcoa, American International Group, Becton Dickinson & Co, EBay, Marsh & McLennan, Nike, Office Depot, Sun Life Financial, Xerox, Barnes & Noble, and Caesars Entertainment Corp.
It's not the first time technology companies voice their support for gay rights. Apple had publically opposed Proposition 8 back in 2008 and Microsoft had made an argument in the Washington state last year in support of gay marriage. A large group of U.S. firms including Goldman Sachs is poised to back a second Supreme Court case involving a federal law that defines marriage as a heterosexual union.
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