Microsoft touts LGBTQ+ inclusion while critics point to Trump concessions

This story was originally published by Uncloseted Media, an LGBTQ focused investigative news outlet.Julius Shan remembers sitting at his desk last August and opening an email that caught him by surprise: “Please find attached the memo terminating your employment with Microsoft, effective immediately.”“It was kind of a shock, but it was also kind of a relief to be fired,” he told Uncloseted Media.Shan, a 28-year-old gay man, had been on the outs with his employer for over a year. When he joined Microsoft in 2020, it felt like a good environment for LGBTQ employees. But over time, he grew disillusioned as he watched the company ignore criticisms from him and his colleagues about the troubling relationships Microsoft has with anti-LGBTQ figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk.“It’s convenient to say that you are protecting and trying to champion LGBTQ rights … while on the other hand taking money from one of the most corrupt administrations there is,” Shan says.Microsoft’s handling of LGBTQ issues wasn’t the only concern he had with the company’s values. Shan says the final straw came when he discovered that Microsoft was supporting a mass surveillance project that helped the Israeli military intercept millions of civilian phone calls in Palestine. Outraged, he joined an occupation protest at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters. The next week, the company fired him, accusing him of “misconduct in violation of company policy.”“I think it really helped me understand where Microsoft’s values really were in terms of its stated values versus how those values actually play out in day-to-day-life,” he says.Microsoft isn’t alone. Because of pressures from the Trump administration, many corporations have stopped expressing outward support for the LGBTQ community. On the surface, Microsoft seems like an exception: It has continued its annual pride campaigns and remains a platinum partner of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).But the com