I ran across several items of the Good News variety in my web wanderings since last we communed in these pages. First up was the announcement by the American Foundation for Equal Rights that with the addition of New Jersey to the Marriage Equality family, 33% of all Americans now live in areas with Marriage Equality as illustrated by the following info-graphics:
Also in the Marriage Equality column is the new poll in Illinois which shows that 54% of their citizens now support Marriage Equality while only 39% oppose. This is especially Good News as the new legislative session in Illinois begins today with Marriage Equality on the docket for this session.
Then there was the announcement yesterday by Credit Suisse that it has produced an LGBT Equality Index and a Portfolio to go along with it. This excerpt from the Credit Suisse press release (via the Wall Street Journal) explains the criteria for inclusion in the index: "The Credit Suisse LGBT Equality Index(TM) is a capitalization-weighted
equity index that measures the performance of US companies recognized
for supporting and promoting equality for members of the LGBT community.
Index inclusion requires a score of 80 or above on the Human Rights
Campaign's Corporate Equality Index (CEI.) The HRC Corporate Equality
Index is the national benchmark for corporate policies and practices
related to LGBT employees."
Ashley Kindergan of the Financialist gives some insight into the portfolio saying "To design the product, Nicole Douillet, a trader at Credit Suisse who is
also the co-chair of the LGBT Network, first put together a market
capitalization-weighted index of LGBT-friendly companies based on the
HRC’s corporate ranking. In its current iteration, the non-tradable
Credit Suisse LGBT Equality Index consists of about 200 companies with a
score of 80 or above on the HRC’s Corporate Equality scorecard. All but
a few are in the S&P 500.
The next step was to create an investable, optimized instrument. To that
end, Credit Suisse’s HOLT team—which evaluates individual companies for
clients ranging from hedge funds to wealth managers—selected from a
list of LGBT-friendly companies with a score of 80 or above the stocks
that they believe are good investment ideas based on more traditional
measures."
Just to illustrate that there is still hope for political sanity to break out, even in such a Republican stronghold as Texas, comes this news out of Bexar County where Judge Carlo Key, who is running for re-election in 2014, ditched the Republican Party for the Democratic Party. In his first campaign video Judge Key explains his reasoning behind the switch. The money shot from the video is the crux of his decision:
"I cannot tolerate a political party that demeans Texans based on their
sexual orientation, the color of their skin or their economic status. I
will not be a member of a party in which hate speech elevates candidates
for higher office rather than disqualifying them. I cannot place my
name on the ballot for a political party that is proud to destroy the
lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers over the vain attempt
to repeal a law that will provide health care to millions of people
throughout our country."
You can read the transcript and/or watch the video over at The New Civil Rights website. Bexar County is heavily Hispanic and I think Judge Key's decision to switch parties will play well with his constituents leading to his victory at the polls come November 2014. Now if we could get more people like Judge Key into Texas state and local offices, we might be able to bring Texas out of the 18th century into the 21st.
Now for your Musical Moment for today, I was in the mood for some music for the bassoon. So I am reprising this play list from about a year ago which
