Google continues its election tradition of supporting gay marriage with a heartstring-tugging new video of Googlers confessing what equality means to them. “TheFour2012” alerts voters to initiatives in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington and provides opportunities to support campaigns in each state (Maine, Maryland, and Washington will approve equality, Minnesota’s would ban it). Google joins a long list of tech companies that have a history of breaking their tradition of industry-specific policy advocacy to promote gay rights.
“Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue,” wrote Apple before California’s controversial approval of Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos contributed a sizable $2.5 million to the cause of marriage equality and Bill Gates chipped in $100k.
“We do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field, especially not social issues,” wrote Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin, “we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.”
Watch (and share) the videos below (an introductory video and a few for the individual states, including one from SNL-actor-turned-U.S. Senator, Al Franken):