The corporate world just showed that it is ready to enter post-homophobic America. Tim Cook came out as a proud gay man, and Wall Street and the stock market barely noticed.
Why is this so momentous? Because Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple, the biggest corporation, as measured by market value, in the United States, larger even than Exxon-Mobile or Microsoft.
This makes Cook the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to openly acknowledge being gay while he was still the CEO. He come to power in the shadow of its legendary founder Steve Jobs, but the stock price has nearly doubled, and new products have continued to roll out, during his three years at the helm.
APPL stock has been at its highest value ever, and it remains there today, following Cook's announcement.
That Cook is gay has been widely known within the Apple executive world; he was elevated to its highest position with full knowledge of this. He chose to make this knowledge public in a classy way: He wrote an essay in Bloomberg Businessweek. What better way of showing that he was speaking to his upper echelon business colleagues -- and competitors.
It is being called a "watershed moment not only in the history of Corporate America, but in the history of the country" (Mark Gongloff of the Huffington Post). He can now become a spokesman for non-discrimination in the workplace -- where it is still legal in 29 states to fire someone just for being gay. Maybe Congress can finally be persuaded to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that has languished for years under Republican opposition.
Gongloff also wrote that "with just one step, Cook has left [Steve] Jobs' shadow and become an icon of his own."
As a proud owner of a few shares of APPL stock myself, I salute our CEO.
Ralph
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