Facebook Under Fire For Donating $10,000 To Politician Who Says Gay Marriage Causes ‘Harm’

Facebook, which had nearly $8 billion in revenue last year, has donated $10,000 to the campaign of Utah’s Republican Attorney General who is aggressively fighting same-sex marriage.

Last year, after Utah’s attorney general resigned in disgrace — and was later arrested by the FBI on bribery charges — Governor Gary Herbert appointed a Republican party official, Sean Reyes, on December 23 to serve out the AG’s term. That was just ten days after a federal court ruled the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

Among the first actions Reyes took was aggressively defending Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage. 

Shortly after taking office, and with the attorney general’s office in shambles, Reyes contracted a private legal firm to assist in the state’s defense of the ban and promised to spend up to $2 million of taxpayer money to do so.

And he petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a “stay” — to halt — same-sex marriage in the state. By the time it did, 1300 couples had married.

“Absent a stay,” Reyes wrote in one recent, separate Supreme Court filing, “there is a likelihood—indeed, a certainty—of irreparable harm to the State” should it be forced to recognize the 1300 legal civil marriages of same-sex couples.

Reyes refuses to legally or even linguistically recognize the marriages of the 1300 couples. He calls them “interim marriages.”

So perhaps it is unsurprising that Facebook is under fire after a local Utah LGBT publication reported that the $8 billion social media monolith has donated $10,000 to help Reyes win election in November.

“When asked about the donation to the person who has arguably become the face of legal opposition to marriage equality in America,” QSaltLake’s Bob Henline reports, “a Facebook spokesperson responded” with this statement:

“Facebook has a strong record on LGBT issues and that will not change, but we make decisions about which candidates to support based on the entire portfolio of issues important to our business, not just one. A contribution to a candidate does not mean that we agree with every policy or position that candidate takes. We made this donation for the same reason we’ve donated to Attorneys General on the opposite side of this issue – because they are committed to fostering innovation and an open Internet.”

Henline has created a Change.org petition asking Facebook to donate an equal amount to Reyes’ opponent.

“I’m an activist within the community, and Sean Reyes has drawn my distaste for his comments about the LGBT community,” Henline told the Huffington Post. “So I wanted to see who was funding his campaign, and when I looked through the disclosures, I discovered that Facebook was his second-largest contributor. Being a Facebook user, I have always assumed that it was pro-equality and pro-diversity, so it shocked me.”

 

Image by Niall Kennedy via Flickr