For the socially conscious LGBT shopper, the Human Rights Campaign has now released its “Buy4Equality” app for the iPhone. Before you buy a company’s product, you can now check how the company fares on HRC’s corporate equality index. Companies are color-coded: green (businesses to support), yellow (businesses that could do better), and red (businesses to avoid or who have failed to respond to HRC surveys). You can either search by brand name alphabetically or by category (e.g., household products or insurance). And in case you don’t have an iPhone, you can text HRC (see the link above for details) with the name of the brand and they’ll text you back with its rating. The app is free. I’m not sure whether I’ll use it, but who knows? It may come in handy some time, like that NYC subway map app that I downloaded (I live in Pittsburgh, but I did work in NYC before I started teaching so I downloaded it mainly for the nostalgia value!).
-Tony Infanti
