Apple CEO Tim Cook: My well-known gayness is 'a gift from God' Apple bossman Tim Cook has come out as gay and has vowed to spend the rest of his life helping to "pave the sunlit path" towards equality and justice. Up until now, Cook's sexuality wasn't so much a secret as an unmentioned truth. He has frequently joined Pride marches and spoken openly about the mistreatment faced by gay …
Don't believe for a moment this wasn't planned. You can bet marketing analysts have been looking into what effect share price effect this will have, will it create a "cool to be gay" think, or will it have a negative effect.
Marketing people are scumbags, and you can be sure there is more to this news than the ad-hoc reveal implies.
Why is this good, wtf does this have to do with selling consumer electronics ?
If he is gay then that is his private life, I do not need to know this.... If his products are good I will buy them if not I won't. What is he hoping for, the sympathy purchase.
This coming out of the closet thing really has become just another marketing tool..
Similarly, having the guts to speak out about climate change:
No, he just suggested they should consider investing elsewhere if they don't like the way he runs the company. Just a little bit of a hubris here, not the evidence of a principled position.
I guarantee you, he would have been less defiant if he knew that the people he proposed it to had enough votes to sack him, though.
Where someone even suspected of being gay could be instantly fired without recourse, helplessly blackmailed by conmen, chemically sterilized by court order, or killed by a mob with no state investigation or criminal charges?
Yes, the 1950's were so much better than the horrors of today, where normals like us have to constantly hear the opening of closet doors.
I'm totally in favor of people being able to live openly however they want. All the thin-brained morons who gossip constantly on the sludge news about whether people like Cook or Cooper are gay are part of the reason these men feel the need to be honest about it. And then the same retards bash them for making a big deal about something that "isn't news".
"Homophobic? I don't think the majority of the world is afraid of gays, it is possible they don't like 'em tho...
Dislike/hate != fear"
You live in a fantasy world of your own creation. Homosexuals are executed in Islamic and several African countries; Singapore just issued a "gays not protected here" ruling by their Court of Appeals yesterday; and 31 states of the United States still allow homosexuals to be fired from work or evicted from their homes, simply for being gay.
These things seemingly don't apply to you as you are (a) apparently clinically ignorant of their existence and impact, or (b) personally uncaring of these consequences. Either way, yes, a good part of the world is still EXTREMELY homophobic.
Heterosexism is a more accurate term than homophobia. The latter literally means fear of the same ("homo" = same; "phobia" = fear), which isn't what people mean when they talk about homophobia. Furthermore, it isn't (generally) a phobia in the sense of a recognised mental health condition.
I understand the sentiment behind this and many other posts here, but the fact is that it *is* news. I agree that it's got nothing to do with his abilities to run a business, and whatever he does behind closed doors is his business. But many people don't agree, and it's still seen as abnormal behaviour. Imagine a scenario where Tim Cook walks into a theatre with his arm around his wife. Then imagine he walks into a theatre with his arm around his boyfriend. Which one gets flashed around the world?
He has to come out publicly so that he can go into that theatre with his partner. It's newsworthy because it's still so rare in more 'macho' walks of life like sport and CEOs. It's also not an easy thing to do, but it serves as an inspiration to others.
If hearing this story isn't interesting for you, fine. But it will continue to be interesting to the press until there are so many Tim Cooks that it's irrelevant. This Tim Cook has added one more to the list. He should be applauded for it.
I agree:
"So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help"
Whatever reservations I may have about Apple Corp (or indeed any other example of BigCorp) I feel that it is entirely positive that the CEO of major corporation has come out in this way.
Especially in the 'Bible Belt' of the US. Some states still have laws that make it perfeclty legal to fire someone for being Gay/Lesbian.
Then there is Uganda where engaging in a gay relationship could get toy sentenced to death.
Most of the hard line Moslem world make it very hard for Gay people to be open about their sexuality.
On the upside, being Openly Gay is mostly better than openly Transexual in a large part of the world.
'could get toy sentenced to death.' is a very interesting line.
Which toy? When? Why?
I could continue about your bad geographical comparisons, but will only add that homosexual sex is massively popular in many Muslim nations, although Syria and Iran seem to be separate from that. Not that it doesn't happen, just that it isn't always surrounded by massive hypocrisy and brutality.
To those of you who "yawn" at the news: he didn't come out for you. No need to read on (or go to the effort of commenting to say that you don't care).
But unfortunately yes: a lot of people do care.
There's the religious fanatics who today are still trying to legislate to deny gay people the rights that they should be allowed to enjoy (heck, look at the number of UK MPs/Lords who tried to block equal marriage last year)
And the visibility does two jobs:
1 - (not so relevant for a CEO in San Francisco) showing the general population that gay people do exist and want to have the dignity that's otherwise denied to them is an important message that helps counteract the sort of legislation I just mentioned.
2 - it shows younger gay people that (a) they're not alone, and (b) they have successful role models in all walks of life.
Did you know that the attempted suicide rate among gay teens is around 20-30%, even in "western" countries? And the % of homeless youths who are gay in the UK and US is somewhere around 30 to 50%.
Surely it can only be a good thing for those young people that they have a hugely successful role model to look up to?
I was seriously wondering why anyone would consider being Gay a "Gift from God", any more than being Hetero would be. Or being male or female, or black, white, asian, whatever. It seemed a weird thing to say, as if given the choice in the womb you'd plump for Gay every time 'cos Gay is better than Straight.
But as aBlokeFromEarth has pointed out, it's more about sending a positive message that it's okay to be gay, that you should celebrate it, not feel alone or allow yourself to be demonised. So yeah, now I get it.
I doubt that Cook actually does wake up every morning with an earnest prayer of thanks to God for making him gay!
It's not like gay people have a choice about being gay or not. And they shouldn't be treated as second class citizens. The more high profile individuals come out as gay, the more people will see that it's no big deal.
The religious right needs to get some backbone and tell their flocks in no uncertain terms to quit stigmatizing gay people. When Jesus said "love thy neighbor", he didn't say "and treat the gays and minorities like second class citizens". A little positive leadership would go a long way, but that doesn't seem to be written large enough in the Bible for these clowns.
// disclaimer: gay friends, hate seeing them treated badly
I don't believe that the religious issue is with people being gay (accident of nature/nurture), it's with people acting gay (their own conscious acts).
The relevant bit in the bible (or one of them?) says something like "a man shall not sleep with another man as with a woman". It doesn't say "shall not desire to sleep with man", or "shall not be tempted to sleep with a man".
The "sin" is in the act, not the thought. Even Jesus was subject to temptation, but the triumph was in not giving in to that temptation.
I don't believe that the religious issue is with people being gay (accident of nature/nurture), it's with people acting gay (their own conscious acts)
Not this old canard again.
It effectively says, "we shall pretend we don't mind your sexuality, just so long as you don't have sex."
The real sin is in using the words of someone who by all accounts was a decent enough guy, who said we shouldn't be hating and killing each other quite so much, to back up exactly the sort of hatred that he was so keen for us to quit engaging in.
The part of the Bible you're quoting also contains lots of other rules for life that nobody much cares to follow anymore: It's funny how that one passage that lets you hate people you don't know is The Genuine Incontrovertible Word of God, and the one about wearing mixed fabric, or not eating bacon butties are somehow only guidelines that are open to interpretation.
(I'm not gay, that's the luck of the draw, but I have a number of friends who are, and I've heard stories through them that would make you wonder about human nature.)
"a man shall not sleep with another man as with a woman"
God actually said "a man shall not sleep with another man as with a woman if he is not gay to start with".
The problem was that the scribe he hired to put his words on paper was deaf on one ear and had a few pints already, this being late in the day, so he missed out the important bits...
I challenge anyone to prove to me it wasn't so.
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