Green, Jay and Mike France (2005) Culture wars hit corporate America BUSINESS WEEK, 5/23, 90-93.

Are you red or blue? It’s boycott time. The culture wars continue. If you buy a product, do those who make it offer benefits to gay partners? What is there position on global warming? Is management encouraging workers to become born again? Can they pass the red or blue litmus test?

They can not. Just ask Microsoft. They had partner benefits for gays. Evangelicals got mad and boycotted Microsoft products. So, Gates changed. Gay groups and numerous other support groups waged a counter boycott and Gates changed again. Now Evangelicals are back. You can’t win. If you take political positions however subtly, some one in the market is going to punish you. Your product may be better, but your attitude is not. So, you lose.

Right now Microsoft is not the only company to suffer. In the midst of this political buzz saw are Procter &Gamble, Kraft, Safeway, General Electric, Winn-Dixie, and Home Depot.

One possibility is to make any political moves as subtle as possible. The second is to develop paper companies which essentially make the same product. One company has the benefits for gays and the other does not. Thus, the product of the red goes to target red areas and the blue product goes to red areas.