3M: The Latest Company to Backtrack on Equality

In Cabaret, it's said that money makes the world go 'round. In Minnesota, it can be said that money makes pro-LGBT businesses throw their LGBT employees and customers under a speeding bus.

Doesn't make for as catchy a song lyric, but it does spell out how three prominent Minnesota corporations have contributed six figures each to support an anti-gay political candidate, Tom Emmer, running for Governor. Those corporations include Target, Best Buy, and now 3M, all companies with great LGBT-friendly policies, but all companies who want Minnesota's next governor to be against gay marriage, against funding HIV/AIDS initiatives, against LGBT people as parents.

Target and Best Buy, as has been widely reported since this summer, gave a grand total of $250,000 to a group known as MN Forward, a political action committee working to elect Emmer. Both companies received a boatload of flak, including tens of thousands of people committed to boycotting the brands. Now 3M has joined their club, giving $100,000 to MN Forward and in support of Emmer's candidacy.

In 3M's case (and this is the case for Target and Best Buy, too), the donation defies their corporate policies. 3M has excellent ratings on the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) Corporate Equality Index and Buying for Equality guide, meaning that the company treats its LGBT employees pretty darn well. So why is it that within the offices of 3M, LGBT people are valued, but out in the world, the company is working to elect politicians with deeply troubling anti-gay records?

A number of folks argue that business is just business, and that corporations shouldn't be held responsible for the social positions of the candidates they endorse. But in a post Citizens United world, where corporations are able to give scads of resources to influence elections, is that answer good enough?

What makes 3M's donation particularly troubling (and again, Target's and Best Buy's, too), is that marriage equality may hang in the balance with Minnesota's gubernatorial election. 3M's candidate, Tom Emmer, will not sign a bill allowing same-sex marriage. Full stop. End of discussion. Shut the front door. Moreover, groups that have consistently demonized the LGBT community, including the National Organization for Marriage, have been actively supporting Tom Emmer's candidacy. Does it honestly make any LGBT consumer feel good to see Target, Best Buy, and now 3M all on the same political side as the National Organization for Marriage?

Hardly.

Emmer may have tax policies that make the executives at 3M, Target, and Best Buy all jump for joy. But if Minnesota sees a Gov. Emmer (and polls are all over the place, suggesting that the race is close), it's not just his tax policies that will shape the state. It's Emmer's anti-gay politics, too.

And for that reason, it's worth sending 3M a message that their money shouldn't go to support politicians who want to limit the civil rights of LGBT Americans. If they wouldn't do it within their own offices, why should 3M support such a move to do so beyond their walls?

Photo credit: TerryJohnston