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Tag: LGBT pride month

  • Google Searches Go Colorful, 3D for LGBT Pride Month

    Google, always on the forefront of public support for LGBT rights, is once again celebrating LGBT pride month with a colorful search box that appears when certain queries are made.

    And this time, it’s 3D!

    LGBT-related searches such as LGBT, gay, gay marriage, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, homosexual, and queer will bring up the multi-colored, 3D search results box.

    Last year, Google displayed a multi-colored, rounded pattern under the search box and back in 2011 it was a curved rainbow on the right-hand side of the box. Google’s been doing this in support of LGBT pride month for the last 6 years.

    In 2011, President Obama called upon Americans to “observe this month by fighting prejudice and discrimination in their own lives and everywhere it exists.” Bill Clinton was the first U.S. President to make the declaration of June as LGBT pride month, doing so back in 2000.

    “At Google, we encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. In all of our 60 offices around the world, we are committed to cultivating a work environment where Googlers can be themselves and thrive. We also want our employees to have the same inclusive experience outside of the office, as they do at work, and for LGBT communities to be safe and to be accepted wherever they are,” the company has said in the past.

  • Google’s Gayglers Look Back On This Year Of Celebrating LGBT Pride

    Today, in an official blog post, Google continued their trend of publicly supporting LGBT pride. June is officially LGBT Pride Month, and Google obviously wanted to make a final push in support of the cause before it’s over.

    And they also reminded us of the official term for a gay Googler:

    We encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. And this month Googlers, Gayglers (gay Googlers), and their families and friends took this spirit to the streets in Pride parades and celebrations around the globe.

    Google tells us that dozens marched as part of a Sao Paulo pride parade for the first time ever. They also got over 1,000 Gayglers and their allies to participate in a San Francisco pride celebration, while is almost twice as many as participated last year.

    Google also represented in Sydney by hosting two “Queer Thinking” seminars.

    They remind us that they made a big move earlier in the year by expanding their transgender benefits:

    In addition to supporting the LGBT community outside of Google, we made some changes to our benefits offerings to support our Gayglers. Earlier this year, we enhanced our transgender-inclusive benefits to cover transitioning procedures and treatment in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care, which includes coverage for procedures like facial feminization for transgender women and pectoral implants for transgender men. We also increased our lifetime maximum coverage for these benefits to $75K—more than double what it had been previously.

    Google has always been one of the staunchest supporters of LGBT issues, dating back to their public opposition to California’s anti-gay marriage initiative Prop 8. For a few straight years, Google has also showed their support for gay rights with colorful designs that accompanying LGBT-related search terms.

    In a climate where such open support can see quite a bit of negative feedback (just ask Oreo), their continued support a testament to just how much Google cares about this issue.

  • Oreo’s Gay Pride Facebook Post Creates A Firestorm (Shocking!)

    June is officially LGBT Pride month, as President Obama continued the tradition with an address last week at the White House.

    “And as long as I have the privilege of being your President, I promise you, you won’t just have a friend in the White House, you will have a fellow advocate for an America where no matter what you look like or where you come from or who you love, you can dream big dreams and dream as openly as you want,” he said.

    LGBT Pride month is a relatively new celebration, having been first declared in 2000 by then-President Clinton. It was picked up again by the Obama administration in 2009, where he called on Americans to “help fight prejudice and discrimination” everywhere.

    And some high-profile companies have heard that call and acted – including the folks at Google, who have implemented a rainbow search bar across all queries relating to LGBT issues like “gay,” “gay marriage,” and “queer.” Google has always been a firm supporter of gay rights, having spoke openly against California’s Prop 8 back in 2008.

    Now, it’s Oreo’s turn (Nabisco > Kraft) to jump in with their support of LGBT Pride month. If you’ve even just glanced at Facebook since Monday evening, you’ve probably seen this post shared by at least a couple of your friends:

    Oreo14 hours ago

    Proudly support love!

    Powered by socialditto  1,000+ likes ·  0 comments

    The post is only about 12 hours old but has already received over 34,000 shares and garnered over 145,000 likes. It’s also approaching 19,000 comments, and as you can expect, there’s an exchange like this happening on every page of them:

    +Ew. NOW i cant eat my favorite packaged cookie anymore. Goodbye Oreo’s. I AM AGAINST HOMO’S!

    +I knew Oreos were the only store bought cookie I liked for a reason. I saw this on my tumblr and had to come the Oreo FB page and “share” this with all my friends.

    To the Oreo company: Thank you. It might seem small, it might seem stupid, but like many have already said it helps bring a bit of faith in humanity back to at least this lesbian.

    So thank you for knowing you’ll lose some customers over this but realizing the message speaks louder than the dollar.

    +If this is “gay pride”, then DISLIKE. I’ve got nothing against gays, but there is no reason for this.

    +*slow claps, tears at the eye*
    But really, this is great! Once companies start showing support, then hopefully that tolerance will trickle down to the community and consumers.
    And rainbow Oreos would be the best.

    Although it may not always be the smartest decision to stand up for a controversial issue on Facebook, it’s definitely a sure-fire way to cause a ruckus. It doesn’t matter who Oreo pleased or who Oreo pissed off with this post, one thing is certain – people are talking about Oreo – 156,000+ right now, according to Facebook’s in-house metric.

  • Google, Once Again, Shows Gay Pride With Colorful Search Bar

    June is LGBT Pride Month, a celebration officially begun in 2000 when President Clinton declared the month “Gay & Lesbian Pride Month.” Every June since President Obama took office, he has declared the month “LGBT Pride Month,” which recognizes two additional groups – bisexual and transgender.

    In 2011, President Obama called upon Americans to “observe this month by fighting prejudice and discrimination in their own lives and everywhere it exists.” And for another year in a row, Google is making a small step toward this with some Easter Eggs hidden within search.

    Searches related to LGBT including LGBT, gay, gay marriage, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, homosexual, and queer will all display a multi-colored pattern right under the search bar. Check it out below:

    This isn’t the first time that Google has given their search box the rainbow treatment for LGBT terms. Last year, during June, Google displayed a more subtle pattern on the right-hang side of the box when users searched any of the terms listed above.

    And it’s not just cute rainbow designs coming from Google is support of LGBT people. Back in 2010, Google made a point to show how they support their LGBT employees by officially announcing that 300 of their employees had marched in San Francisco’s annual Pride parade.

    Plus, Google wasn’t shy back in 2008 about their position on California’s Prop 8, which sought to outlaw gay marriage:

    While there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality.

    Although Google is one of the most outspoken tech companies on the issue of LGBT equality, another high-profile name might be making a subtle push in that direction. Yesterday we learned that Apple’s upcoming iOS 6 will include gay & lesbian Emoji.