Mississippi goddam, as Nina Simone once sang. You really know how to tick people off. The southern state has come a long way since it led the fight to maintain racial segregation. But this week it decided to take a new stand – against the LGBT community. Opponents of the anti-LGBT effort won’t give up without a fight, and this time, business leaders are at the vanguard.
Once shy of causing a political fuss, businesses large and small are backing LGBT rights, and states that don’t support them are losing jobs as a result.
Following the passage of House Bill 1523 into law Tuesday, Mississippi will soon be the state offering the least protection to gay, lesbian and transgender people at a time when twenty-one states, largely across the south, have introduced laws offering their clear response to the legalisation of gay marriage by allowing people and businesses to refuse services based on their own religious beliefs.
This sweep of anti-LGBT legislation is revealing the clear separation that now exists between conservative-leaning state legislatures and businesses, local and national, that are now supporters as well as signatories to campaigns calling for the legislation’s repeal.
The laws – allowing individuals and institutions to deny services on religious grounds in Mississippi and, in North Carolina, a ban on anti-discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and a requirement that, in public buildings and schools, transgender people use bathrooms corresponding to their gender as assigned at birth – produced a rapid response.
In North Carolina, PayPal canceled a $3.6m investment for a new global operations centre that would have employed 400 people; Nissan, the largest single employer in Mississippi, quickly reiterated its support of the LGBT community, and Duke Energy, the state’s largest power company, has come out strongly in opposition to discrimination, but has not taken a position on the law itself.
Local business leaders and educators warned that the legislation could harm the state’s competitiveness in attracting business and investment. “These assholes talk about gay women and gay men using the exact same language they were using in the 50s and 60s for segregationist purposes,” said the award-winning chef John Currence, owner of several restaurants in Oxford, Mississippi. He warned that Mississippi’s HB1523, known as the Religious Liberty Accommodation Act, would put businesses off from setting up in the state.
Photograph: PR
“When people see this kind of regressive social politics going on, it affects the quality of life”, he said. The new laws, he added, “could not be any more vile or regressive”.
Ivo Kamps, a University of Mississippi English professor, warned the law “will have a chilling effect on our ability to recruit students and faculty”, despite the university chancellor’s assurance that nothing would change.
But to what extent can business leaders affect policymakers, particularly when it comes to issues that are matters of apparent faith to conservative lawmakers but outrageous prejudice to others?
Legislation like North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” and Mississippi’s more elaborate legislation have been introduced with increased frequency since the supreme court legalized same-sex marriage last year. In most cases, businesses have been public in their disapproval. In some cases, including Georgia and North Dakota, state governors have simply refused to sign the statutes into law.
The problem for Mississippi, says Eric Fleming, of the state’s chapter of the ACLU, is that HB1523 compounds the state’s controversial image. “We still have the Confederate flag embedded in our state flag, so to add this legislation is to make Mississippi a tougher sell than it should be.”
But the reaction of business, at a local and corporate level, points to the way diversity and tolerance is now considered a key attribute. In 2014, when HB1523 was first introduced, C Mitchell Moore, owner of Campbell’s Bakery in Jackson, started a campaign on Facebook: “If You’re Buying, We’re Selling.”
“We weren’t given a choice. The governor said he was doing it on behalf of bakers and florists so they wouldn’t have to take part in same sex marriages. But they never asked the people they claimed to be acting for. So the first thing we did was to say, ‘No, you don’t speak for us.’ You don’t succeed as a business by discriminating against sexuality just as you don’t succeed if you discriminate against people for their colour or age or disability.”
Academics say the current legislation, combined with the Citizens United bill of 2010 that in effect gave corporations the rights of citizens, has placed corporations at the forefront of efforts to contain the spread of ideologically extreme legislation.
In North Carolina, more than 130 business, including Bank of America, signed on to a letter urging lawmakers to repeal the transgender law in the upcoming legislative session.
“Businesses tend to be followers, but once there is a consensus, they will jump in feet first,” says Peter Henning, professor of law at Wayne State University.
“Corporations would rather be silent, but they can’t be. The public, particularly the buying public, want to know where companies stand on issues. Consumers are politicized and they are paying attention to the point that it’s become an expectation that corporations will take positions.”
Typically, says Henning, corporations would prefer not to see this as part of a marketing strategy - though it is. “Corporations would much rather go through life just making money but they can’t. They are in the public eye and the public expects this. So now they have the right - and burden - to speak out on public issues.”
That, increasingly, includes speaking out in anticipation of legislation. Last week, Dow Chemical, HP and Alcoa joined civil rights groups in urging Tennessee law-makers to abandon legislation similar to North Carolina’s affecting the state’s estimated 10,000 transgender students.
“Business leaders know that discrimination is both bad for business and bad for Tennessee,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the country’s largest LGBT rights groups.
The Mississippi bill, which is not scheduled to take effect until July 31st, goes further than previous “bathroom” bills. In addition to allowing individuals and organizations to use religion as justification for discrimination, the law allows foster parents to subject LGBT children to so-called conversion therapy. Mississippians are also allowed to deny housing based on their religious beliefs.
If businesses are prepared to act politically, there’s still a division between acting proactively, as in Tennessee, or after the fact, as is in North Carolina, where Bank of America is joining with HRC to try to force the repeal of the law, known as HB2.
As the pressure on Mississippi lawmakers mounts – last week, Hillary Clinton and Bernard Sanders added their voices to the chorus of condemnation - companies a looking to stress their diversity credentials.
Nissan, employer of 6000 at its plant in Canton, MS, brandished a perfect score awarded by HRC’s Corporate Equality Index, essentially a checklist of non-discrimination standards. The company spokesman drew attention to its sponsorship of the gay softball championships in Columbus, Ohio, and its establishment of a gay-straight alliance designed to raise awareness among employees within the organisation about LGBTQ issues.
“The first thing we felt we needed to do was get our own house in order,” said Richard Ash, senior manager of media planning and strategy at Nissan. Ash stresses the importance of authenticity. “Are you here just to sell a car or do you have something authentic to say? When you talk directly and authentically to these communities, they respond well, they’re loyal customers and it’s appreciated.”
Nor is that idea lost on regional competitors; states are actively looking to poach business from rivals with anti-LGBT legislation. Last week, New York and Vermont banned non-essential state-funded travel to Mississippi. In Connecticut, lawmakers pitched Bank of America to relocate its head office from North Carolina to a state that it says shares it values. There’s money in progressive values, as some southern states are finding out.
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