9 Comments

Telecom companies are well-represented herein. I wonder how many of these vociferous anti-LGBTQ legislators are also opponents of net neutrality.

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I am not an AT&T employee however, I am married to a gay 20-year​ AT&T employee. Your article lists 2.75M political donations to anti-LGBT lawmakers​ between in 2017-18. Per Open Secrets AT&T contributed 5M to individual candidates 2.8M to Dems and 2.1M to Repubs. 24 out of the top 25 top recipients​ were Dem candidates. These names are from anti-LGBT​. (https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000076&cycle=2018) Your math is not adding up. In 2016 the top individual recipients were #1 Hillary Clinton $345,794; #2 Bernie Sanders $82,407. AT&T does a lot for the LGBT community that is not in the spotlight. Such as working with their state lobbyist to bat ban bathroom or religious freedom bills before the bill even gets a vote in committee. Signing on to a "friend of the court" brief that will be filed (7/3/19 with the U.S. Supreme Court in a trio of cases that may determine whether LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under existing federal civil rights laws – which prohibit sex discrimination in contexts ranging from the employment to housing, health care and education.

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You aren’t following my methodology. I considered contributions to anti-LGBT politicians and their leadership PACs from the ATT PAC. I did not look at all at contributions from individual employees

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The figures I listed from open secrets include all PAC and employees giving more than $200. I’m trying to follow your methodology but I’m still having a problem with math. Contribution to candidates was 5M & 1.3M to Leadership PACS in 2017-2018.

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You still aren’t following methodology. Feel free to email me for more details

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Cynically, they wanna play both sides. I wonder if their LGBTQ employees know of their duplicity?

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Unbelievable. You can't make this sh*t up. If the information you uncover were to be woven into a novel, critics would deride your dark, dystopian view of humanity.

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I'm a Verizon user and I'd like to switch to a carrier that isn't working against my interests. AT&T is out and Credo has bad coverage. How is T-Mobile? How do I research what *any* company is doing with the money I pay them?

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Jun 17, 2019
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The measure is how elected officials these corporations support financially vote on legislation that impacts LGBTQ people.

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