Tim Cook is gay. But he needs to do more for LGBT rights than be 'out'

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/31/tim-cook-igay-do-more-for-lgbt-rights

Version 0 of 1.

Tim Cook came out Thursday – sort of – in Bloomberg Businessweek, which was probably the most appropriate venue for the Apple CEO to finally be open about his sexuality, three years after Gawker dubbed him “the most powerful gay man in America.”

But let’s not fall all over ourselves with unmitigated joy.

Cook is just the latest gay man or lesbian to come out long after he got his – and that’s not “courage”, and it’s hardly even pride. We all come out, often repeatedly, at the time that is right for each of us. But when clearly powerful people understand their sexuality and stay in the closet, even by omission, it is no reason to bust out the confetti – especially while there are so many queer people out doing the hard work of achieving equality and liberation at great risk to themselves.

Like Ricky Martin, Anderson Cooper, and Robin Roberts most recently before him, Cook came out long into a career that is secure, and with a fat bank account and a legion of lawyers and supporters to protect him from any blowback. For someone like Cook, who chose to “pass” for years, to now ask the LGBT community he’s been unwilling to publicly admit he’s a part of to celebrate the “brick” he’s added on “the sunlit path toward justice” feels to me like a black person parading around in white face, taking all the benefits of whiteness, getting rich and then scrubbing off the makeup and saying, “Surprise! I’m proud to be black!”

Why do we celebrate these people who have never stood up as one of us until they are rich and famous?

Cook is just the latest example of equality being heralded in a corporate space – providing a de-radicalized, homo-normatizing and apolitical approach to LGBT rights. Not barring the gay CEO from the premises doesn’t automatically lead to massive social change on the scale of, say, a federal law banning LGBT employment discrimination or adding LGBT protections to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Celebrating a CEO (whom everyone knew was gay) officially coming out is more like celebrating that the New York City St Patrick’s Day Parade – which hasn’t ever allowed out gay groups to march – is allowing one corporate NBC Universal employee group to march in 2015 while not welcoming the queer Irish groups which have fought the ban for decades.

I am worried about how Cook’s announcement will again frame gay civil rights primarily around marriage and not around political liberation or economic freedom, and also how it may again frame gayness as something that happens to rich white men.

And, if Cook believes “deeply in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said, ‘Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ ” then his company might want to consider taking seriously the well-being of its suicidal workers at its factories. He might think about what Dr. King would think of Apple allegedly engaging in hiring practices that purportedly violated antitrust laws, with the same workers who created the wealth that everyone was apparently so worried might be reduced if too many people knew the CEO was gay.

Steven-Emmanuel Martinez, a health educator, told me: “I am glad [Cook] realized there is a lot of agency in a young, gay boy from Alabama growing up to be a successful CEO ... But I am much more interested in seeing what he does next.” He explained:

Can you put your money where your heart is? What are you going to do for LGBT homeless youth? What are you going to do about HIV/AIDS knowing it has a high burden in the south and in your home state? How are you going to use your seat as a powerful executive [to] open up the debate beyond marriage equality and beyond coming out? How will this serve people who aren’t in your position?”

Cook might want to consider the possibility that Apple, one of the two most valued corporations on the face of this earth, should pay U.S. taxes, so that our society could confront the economic ills Martinez raises which LGBT people face.

That’s not to suggest that there’s some great consensus on what Cook means for gay rights. Brian Ellner, who ran the Human Rights Campaign’s marriage equality efforts in New York State in 2011, told me “I think it’s an enormous deal when arguably one of the most successful CEOs of one of the most successful corporations in the world decides to come out.” He added, “There’s been a real dearth of CEOs who have come out, and that’s likely to change now.”

But I don’t care whether Tim Cook – or any other CEO – is gay and eventually admits it to the world at large. In the era in which a CEO’s coming-out essay is published in a magazine for other businessmen, he’s not trying to be visible to the LGBT community as much as to the straight, white male readers of a business magazine. (It would have been much more “gay” if he’d used one of his new iPhones and posted his picture to Grindr.) But regardless of how Cook left the closet, being gay isn’t enough to play on our team anymore, not when you’re also rich and powerful – we need someone who will go to bat for us, too.