During its upcoming 2019-2020 term, the Supreme Court will rule on whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act applies to LGBTQ discrimination. Google today filed a friend of the court brief encouraging that those protections be extended.
The United States Supreme Court ruled today in favor of the union of same-sex couples, effectively giving new civil rights to LGBT couples by declaring that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, and Google is going all-out in its celebration.
Update: Google has uploaded a video to its Android YouTube account, embedded at the bottom of this post, to formally announce the campaign, which it’s calling “And Proud,” with lots of people on Twitter using the #andproud hashtag to share their Android.
Androidify, the cutesy undercover app part of Google’s “Be together, not the same” campaign, has received a small update today — but only in terms of its download size. The update brings a lot of LGBT pride focused clothing and moves that you can add to your custom Android character. The update seems to align well with the annual San Francisco Pride Parade, held on June 28th, at which Google employees make a regular appearance. And if you create a Pride-themed character and share it to the Androidify.com website by June 27th, your character will be a part of Google’s “global online Pride parade,” being held on the same day.
Google is well known for its efforts to support diversity both inside and outside of the company through initiatives like covering the health benefits of LGBT couples and Made with Code, a program to get more young girls learning how to code. You can get the update via APKMirror right now, but if you aren’t quite familiar with manually updating and installing apps, the update to version 4.0 (from 3.0) should be rolling out via the Play Store to your device at some point over the next 24 hours.
Google traditionally participates in LGBT Pride month in a variety of ways, with one of the most notable being its redesigned search results page for several LGBT queries.
As has happened every June for the last several years, Google has dressed up searches for many LGBT-related queries with a rainbow design. We’ve tried a variety of searches, seeing the above banner when typing queries such as LGBT, LA pride, SF pride, gay pride, marriage equality, and more. June was declared LGBT Pride Month by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, as well as this year. Also worth noting is that this is Google’s second move (at least) of support for the LGBT community; the company put a doodle up earlier this year showing support for LGBT olympians.
Google is once-again touting support for the LGBT community by participating in worldwide Pride events and expanding company-wide benefits.
According to “Gaygler” Randy Reyes on the official Google blog:
We encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. And this month Googlers, Gayglers (gay Googlers), and their families and friends took this spirit to the streets in Pride parades and celebrations around the globe. In Sao Paulo, a group of 50 marched as a Google contingent for the first time ever. In San Francisco, more than 1,000 Googlers and allies marched (nearly doubling the number of people we had in 2011!). In New York, more than 700 of our friends and colleagues took over 5th Avenue marching alongside our double-decker Pride bus. And this weekend in Singapore, we’re sponsoring the Pink Dot celebration for the second consecutive year.
Reyes further revealed action-based plans to celebrate World Pride in London this year. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company will host a “Legalise Love” Conference at Google London, with hopes to “eliminate homophobia” and “decriminalize homosexuality.”
Google also significantly increased coverage of transgender health care for its U.S. employees. Transgender-inclusive benefits, such as “transitioning procedures and treatment in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care,” now receive a lifetime maximum coverage of $75,000.
“Next month we’ll carry the energy of Pride into our fourth annual company Diversity & Inclusion celebration, the Sum of Google. The Sum is an opportunity to celebrate and engage in a discussion about diversity and inclusion across our offices around the world,” Reyes concluded.
A picture gallery is below.
Google is marking any LGBT-related query this month with a rainbow-colored banner under the search box.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company is once-again celebrating LGBT Pride Month, as it has down for the last five years in a row, by adding a bit of color to its search.
U.S. President Barack Obama declared June as LGBT Pride Month for 2012. The month-long stance is against discrimination and violence toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, with promotion for equal and civil rights.
International LGBT+ equality organization All Out has just posted this petition asking Android users to support the removal of “Is My Son Gay”, an app currently in the Marketplace that aims to figure out a person’s sexual preference based on a clearly homophobic questionnaire.
Hopefully Google will remove the app soon, as they’ve done with similarly offensive apps in the past. Below are some of the questions included in the app’s quiz, if you’re interested in what all the fuss is about.
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