Salesforce.com Makes A Stand Against Bigotry.

When Martin Luther King exclaimed that he had a dream, he probably didn’t expect support to come from the direction of a billionaire Silicon Valley CEO. But that is what we see today as Salesforce.com and its CEO Marc Benioff take a stand against a new piece of legislation in Indiana.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act essentially legalizes discrimination and gives the ability for businesses to choose who they provide goods and services too. Hate Jews? In Indiana, you don’t have to serve them. Feel uncomfortable about homosexuality? Indiana is the place for you, where you can bury your head and pretend it doesn’t exist.

As the son of parents who survived the Holocaust (and the grandson of some who didn’t) this feels very much like a prelude to another Kristallnacht. So as a member of the technology industry, I feel incredibly proud of the stand being taken by Benioff and Salesforce.
Indiana is, of course, the home of ExactTarget, one of the many companies that Salesforce has acquired in recent years. As such, this act strikes at the heart of Salesforce’s business, and it is appropriate then for Benioff to state a position. And state it he did. In a letter sent to Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Benioff, alongside a group of other tech CEOs, stated unequivocally that:

We will be forced to dramatically reduce our investment in Indiana based on our employees’ and customers’ outrage over the Indiana religious freedom bill.

He also made a more public announcement, telling his numerous followers on Twitter the following:

An excerpt of the letter sent to Pence is below; it is unusual to see such strong language:

We firmly believe in the separation of church and state as provisioned in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The RFRA clearly blurs that line and opens the door to blatant discrimination. As leaders of technology companies, we not only disagree with this legislation on a personal level, but the RFRA will adversely impact our ability to recruit and retain the best and the brightest talent in the technology sector. Technology professionals are by their nature very progressive, and backward-looking legislation such as the RFRA will make the state of Indiana a less appealing place to live and work.

Unfortunately, the state is trying to wrap this legislation up in a cloak of altruism. The Indiana Family Institute is pushing this as being “a measure to protect businesses from the government”. The premise being that small businesses (who also happen, in their example, to be bigoted) might not want to speak to and voice their distaste about minorities. By enacting this legislation, Indiana protects their right to be silent and bigoted all at the same time.

The technology industry actually has a pretty proud history of pushing diversity initiatives. Despite significant hand-wringing from the Silicon Valley set about the lack of diversity in our industry, it is instances like this that show us just how far from the societal norm we are. We may (rightly) express concern at the lack of gender-balance in the ranks of technology executives, but faced with something like the Indiana legislation, that concern is put starkly into perspective.

The industry, and the world at large owe kudos to Benioff and the other signatories to this letter. Bigotry isn’t good for humanity, society or justice. All these years on it is sad to see that MLK’s dream was, in some ways, just a dream. 

forbes.