Cook a boost for gay, lesbian rights

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently announced that he is gay, sparking discussions across the world. Some people say the announcement will bring benefits to Apple. Still others say Cook's announcement shows Apple is making efforts to maintain its diversified corporate image.

Although Cook is the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to say he is gay, his sexual orientation hasn't been a closely guarded secret. Cook has said many of his colleagues have known that he is gay for a long time.

In fact, homosexuality has not been taboo for Apple; its logo is a tribute to the father of computer science, Alan Turing, who happened to be gay and committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple.

Many companies, especially in Western countries, have come to realize that sexual orientation has nothing do with an employee's work performance. In the United Kingdom, for example, the law prohibits employers from discriminating against employees because of their sexual orientation. From my personal experience in Britain, university teachers and other employees treat their gay and lesbian colleagues normally. And when they talk about relationships, they do not differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

But this equal treatment for gays and lesbians doesn't have a long history, although it took a long time to consign the prejudices to the dustbin of history. Homophobia in the Western world had a lot to do with religion. In Britain, homosexuality used to be regarded as a "crime" and punished according to law. In 1895, the author Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for "sodomy".