Really, when you think about it, you've gotta have a bit of sympathy for Redmond's anti-gay preacher Ken Hutcherson.
He competes for attention in a crowded field of anti-gay ministers and doesn't seem to make much headway. Despite his constant appeals for media attention, he couldn't even make it onto Queerty's list of top-20 anti-gay activists.
For weeks now, he's been hinting on his "Prayer Warriors" mailing list that he was about to make a big splash with a program to target companies that offer employment equality to their LGB workers. The big premier for his program was to come, he hinted, at Microsoft's shareholder meeting this week in Seattle.
That turned out to be mostly a bust, judging from reports about his appearance on Slog.
[[Update 11/16: Mostly. But even that minor appearance managed to get him a fawning piece in The Telegraph (London). See Hutcherson's plan: A buy-up of Microsoft stock in Qnews. We suspect employees with stock options are delighted to hear that someone -- anyone -- is planning to buy the company's stock.]]
Hutcherson apparently owns some of Microsoft's currently cheap stock, so he was able to get into meeting just like any other shareholder. And he was -- like every other shareholder -- given the opportunity to walk up to a microphone in the hall and make a statement that Balmer, Gates and other execs were forced to hear (if not listen to) from their perch on a stage.
This is how Hutcherson described the interaction to his Prayer Warriors:
Thank you so much, Prayer Warriors, for praying for the meeting, which went well.
Bill Gates, Chairman; Steve Ballmer, CEO; Brad Smith, Executive Vice President of Legal; and Chris Liddell, CFO, were present in today’s meeting.
I addressed the meeting, letting them know I would love to work with them. However, if they refuse, I am putting together the largest contingency of Evangelicals, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims to challenge Microsoft’s support of people and policies that challenge America’s moral beliefs since its inception.
My final comment was, “I could work with you, or I could be your worst nightmare, because I am a black man with a righteous cause, with a host of powerful white people behind me. I hope to hear from you and if not, you will hear from me.”
Pray God will take this to their hearts and minds and that they will respond to me.
This is how local blogger "Gay Curmudgeon" described it in a Slog comment:
If we are adhering strictly to the rules, any stock holder can attend and speak at a stockholder meeting. So for the price of less than $40 you get into the room.
When they opened Q&A there was the customary pause caused by no one wanting to be first to speak. Hutch doesn't have the restraint of a well moderated ego so he stepped into the vacuum immediately. As Hutcherson spoke, only one person clapped out of the 500-600 people present.
Hutch has been trying to get the attention he craves but nothing has been working. His last resort is to fallback on the one thing that worked for him - baiting Microsoft.
Another stockholder asked what they could do to counter the hateful ideas and actions of people like Hutcherson. There was a more enthusiastic wave of applause in the meeting. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Legal Counsel, responded with this:
"As a company, we've had a clear policy with respect to the way we treat our people, and we believe in that policy. It's a policy that's founded on non-discrimination, it's a policy that we believe has served our employees well, it's served our shareholders well, and I think that was reflected last year when all of our shareholders were asked to vote on that policy, and over 97 percent of you and all of our other shareholders stood up and agreed with us. And I think that it is precisely in that form that shareholders have the opportunity to continue to make their views known, and we very much appreciate that support."
No Microsoft executive agreed to meet with him. Microsoft’s EEO policy in no way agrees with him.
Just another sad grab for PR from a man with a size 4 soul in a size 12 body.
Poor Pastor Hutch seems to be trying to recreate his brief success with Microsoft -- when he was able to get them to momentarily back off from support for Washington's employment non-discrimination act. That was one of the few high points of Hutcherson's anti-gay activist career. But even that backfired, when Microsoft was forced -- largely by employee action -- to reverse course and give even stronger support the following year to the act, which finally passed.
Another high-point for Hutch came when he visited Riga, Latvia and rubbed shoulders with the country's ruling politicians while passing himself off as some kind of official White House envoy -- credentials that the White House was later forced to discredit.
But the visits to Riga did manage to ingratiate Hutch with Riga's powerful anti-gay preacher, Alexey Ledyaev, and his Russian-speaking following in the US [background info]. From that visit grew the group Watchmen on the Walls that held a sparsely-attended gathering last month in Lynnwood. [seaQwa posts]
The Watchmen are meeting again this week at a more friendly venue in Riga. Hutcherson's Watchmen partner, Oregon's Scott Lively, is there -- offering his usual bizarre statements to the press. Hutcherson isn't.
And even the Watchmen's power base from New Generation Church in Riga is losing some of its power.
The right-wing coalition Latvian government that is supported by -- and that gives political support to -- Ledyaev's church is teetering from corruption scandals. The government is unlikely to survive through the end of the month. While Ledyaev's political allies are trying to create a new right-wing coalition to replace the current one, more moderate groups seem to be solidifying their position during the current crisis.
And that's not the only bad news for Hutch's friends. Even while Ledyaev, Lively, and the Watchmen were meeting elsewhere in town, the country's highest court today ruled that the Riga's 2006 ban on a gay pride march was illegal, making it difficult for any future council to bar such a gathering.
Pastor Hutch is sure to keep trying to make it into first-string all-stars of anti-gay bigots, and that's scary enough, but we can be comforted to know that he's mostly only a backup player forced to watch most of the frightful game from the bench.