Gay advocacy group gives Apple perfect score

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an advocacy group dedicated to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues, has announced the results of its first Corporate Equality Index, which rates large corporations on the basis of policies that affect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees. Apple and twelve other companies scored perfectly, according to the report. Apple joined a diverse collection of companies including Aetna Inc, Eastman Kodak Co., Intel, Lucent and Xerox.

Kim I. Millis, HRC education director, explained that while many of the companies show “a long commitment” to issues affecting gay and lesbian employees, the perfect scores were the result of companies that had added gender identity to their non-discrimination policies.

The Corporate Equality Index rated 319 companies on a scale of 0 to 100 percent on seven factors, including:

whether they have a written non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation;

have a written non-discrimination policy covering gender identity and/or expression;

offer health insurance coverage to their employees’ same-sex domestic partners;

and decline to engage in any activities that would undermine the goal of equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

More information about the Corporate Equality Index and how some of the other companies rated is available from the HRC’s Web site.