Starbucks Flies Huge 800 Square Foot Gay Pride Flag Atop Its World Headquarters

Coffee icon Starbucks is celebrating pride month by flying a huge, 800 square foot gay pride flag atop its Seattle, Washington worldwide headquarters.

Starbucks chairman, CEO, and president Howard Schultz has stood up to repeated attacks over his company’s support of LGBT civil rights, including same-sex marriage. Even a National Organization For Marriage sponsored boycott, with a Dump Starbucks website and international campaign has not deterred the head of the $15 billion coffee giant standing for what he sees as right. And if this month’s foray into celebrating pride month is any indication, he never will.

Flying atop Starbucks world headquarters in Seattle, Washington is an enormous 800 square foot rainbow gay pride flag that measures 38 feet across and 19 feet high.

The idea wasn’t Schultz’s, it came from an employee, inspired after seeing Starbucks HQ fly the Seattle Seahawks’ flag to celebrate their Super Bowl win.

“It was such a surprise and it was so fun to see support for our hometown team,” Anthony Hesseltine, a Starbucks 10-year veteran, said in a company press release. “Then I thought, what if? No. Well, maybe?”

Months later, Hesseltine began floating the idea of having the Pride Flag raised on Starbucks headquarters for the first time.

“There was no resistance,” he said. “It was more difficult for me to find and purchase the flag than it was to get people in the building to support the idea of flying the Pride flag.”

As a sourcing manager for Starbucks supplier diversity program, Hesseltine has connections.

“Not everyone will approve of Starbucks flying the Pride flag. I don’t wish any harm by having the flag fly, but I do want people to reflect,” Hesseltine says. “The whole message is about diversity and accepting people for their differences. If you think about a rainbow, no one color is dominant. It’s a harmonization of different colors, each color contributing to the whole.”

At Starbucks’ annual stockholders meeting last year, a National Organization For Marriage-affiliated activist stood up and slammed Schultz for his decision to support same-sex marriage, wrongly blaming a dip in earnings to the move.

“Not every decision is an economic decision,” Schultz told him. “Despite the fact that you recite statistics that are narrow in time, we did provide a 38 percent shareholder return over the last year. I don’t know how many things you invest in, but I would suspect not many things, companies, products, investments have returned 38 percent over the last 12 months. Having said that, it is not an economic decision to me. The lens in which we are making that decision is through the lens of our people. We employ over 200,000 people in this company, and we want to embrace diversity of all kinds.”

“If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38% you got last year, it’s a free country,” Schultz said. “You can sell your shares in Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much.”

 

Image by Starbucks Partners via Twitter
Hat tip: Towleroad