The Fair Employment Mark allows supporters of gay rights to “vote with their wallets,” rewarding companies that treat gay employees fairly by purchasing their products and services. The Fair Employment Mark can advance the practice of gay-rights advocacy on the ground in the work place—where it matters most for many lesbians and gay men.

The idea is simple, really. The Fair Employment mark is an innocuous symbol, “FE” inside a circle, which signals to informed consumers that the company has officially committed to the equal employment standards summarized in the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that has been proposed repeatedly since 1993 but not yet enacted by Congress. ENDA would, in effect, include sexual orientation in the group of characteristics that Title VII already makes off limits as the basis for the terms and conditions of employment.

The Fair Employment Mark, in contrast to ENDA, creates a voluntary system to achieve the same goals as ENDA. By crafting the Fair Employment Mark license simply to prohibit the core concept of discrimination—treating people differently because of their sexual orientation—and by expressly privatizing the effects of the proposed federal legislation, the mark builds upon the substantial existing support for ENDA.

You can learn more about the mark in Chapter 4 of Straightforward or in our free article, Mark(et)ing Nondiscrimination.