In my book, I investigate why firms in the 1990s and early 2000s adopted policies toward their gay employees that went beyond what the state and federal law required of them. Specifically, I ask why Fortune 500 firms expanded their nondiscrimination policies to include gays and lesbians and/or their benefits programs to include domestic partners. Although it almost seems foreign to write it now, at that time these decisions may have not made much sense for many large firms. In most states and certainly at the federal level, there was little threat of regulation on these issues, and indeed, most public policymaking on gay rights was overtly hostile toward LGBT individuals.

But, in part, the hostility of the state and federal governments explains corporate America’s progressivism on these issues: Seeing that public policy was hostile, gay rights groups made big business their number one target and sought through various confrontational and cooperative ways to get firms to change their policies. What ultimately enabled these groups to succeed, whether they were national gay rights organizations or gay employee groups within the firms, was the shift in public opinion on gay rights that was already well underway on issues other than marriage in the 1990s. So two things — the combination of activists pointing to shifts in public (meaning, consumer) attitudes, and the speed at which a firm, as opposed to a public policymaking body, can change policy — helped accelerate the expansion of gay rights in the private sector.