Show me the receipts: Examining Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s LGBTQ+ track record
Here, we look back at the times Bezos and Amazon’s interactions with the LGBTQ+ community have made headlines
Since founding Amazon in 1994, Jeff Bezos has become the world’s fourth wealthiest person (net worth: $279 billion) and a symbol of hyper-capitalism.
Like his peers Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, he has often courted controversy. Here, we look back at the times Bezos and Amazon’s interactions with the LGBTQ+ community have made headlines.
After all, as the company’s founder, dominant influence, public face and longtime largest shareholder, Amazon can reasonably be seen as an extension of him…
2005 ✓
Glamazon, Amazon’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, is formalised. Although this is great, it’s eyebrow-raising that it takes place over 10 years after Amazon’s founding and, by Amazon’s own admission, six years after LGBTQ+ employees started building an internal community by email.
July 2012 ✓
Three years before the federal introduction of marriage equality, Bezos and then-wife MacKenzie Scott pledge “$2.5m to supporters of gay marriage in Washington state, in what is believed to be the largest-ever single donation to the campaign for same-sex unions in the US,” the Guardian reports. The move surprises because Amazon has not previously involved itself in social missions.
Ex-Amazon employee Jennifer Cast, then a 50-year-old mother of four living with her same-sex partner, had asked Bezos for a $100,000 donation. “I want to have the right to marry the love of my life and to let my children and grandchildren know their family is [honoured] like a ‘real’ family,” she wrote in an email to him. “We need help from straight people. To be very frank, we need help from wealthy straight people who care about us and who want to help us win.”
Bezos replied: “This is right for so many reasons. We’re in for $2.5 million. Jeff & MacKenzie.” One for the history books.
February 2014 ✓
Landmark Amazon Studios TV show Transparent, an award-winning comedy-drama about a parent’s later-life gender transition, debuts on Prime. Other high-profile LGBTQ+ storytelling commissioned by Amazon over the years includes Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2021), the Harry Styles-starring My Policeman (2022), Red, White and Royal Blue (2023) and Overcompensating (2025). (Side note: a few of these are great, but we would have hoped for more LGBTQ+-themed series.)
October 2017 ✓
Bezos accepts an Equality Award at LGBTQ+ rights organisation the Human Rights Campaign’s national dinner, presented to him by the aforementioned Cast. In his acceptance speech, Bezos says: “We want our employees – and the communities where we operate – to embrace that we’re all human, we’re all different and we’re all equal.” He goes on to add: “Children accept one another for who they are – gay, transgender, straight. They inherently understand the concept of human equality – it’s innate.”
April 2018 ✓
Anonymous sources tell the Washington Post (which Bezos bought in 2013 and still owns) that Amazon had “quietly” made rights for and the acceptance of gay and transgender people part of its criteria in choosing a second headquarters. The report details how an “Amazon executive groaned at the mention of proposed legislation in Georgia that would restrict funding for same-sex adoption.” The second Amazon headquarters is eventually established in National Landing in Pentagon City, Virginia.
2018 ✓
Anthony Little, president of Glamazon, tells the Washington Post he is “very proud” of company policies, such as the expansion of health benefits to fully cover transition surgeries for trans employees and the opposition to Washington state’s version of a bathroom bill.
October 2018 ×
According to IntoMore, Bezos donates over $10k to the re-election campaign of Senator Cory Gardner, an anti-LGBTQ Republican.
December 2020 ×
A report by openDemocracy finds that Amazon has allowed 40 anti-LGBTQ groups to raise money through its AmazonSmile programme, where customers donate to charities as they shop online. This, despite AmazonSmile’s Participation Agreement stating eligible charities cannot “engage in, support, encourage, or promote: intolerance, discrimination or discriminatory practices based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age”.
December 2020 ×
“Amazon Prime UK bans Chilean Drama The Prince for ‘offensive content’” reports Deadline. The erotic drama, written and directed by Sebastián Muñoz, follows a young prisoner who forges a relationship with his much older cellmate in 1970s Santiago. It contains sexual and violent scenes. Peccadillo MD Tom Abell tells Deadline: “We have been trying to overturn their decision without avail and cannot understand why, when we have overwhelming support from all other platforms, they have taken this stance.”
2021 ✓
Glamazon is named as a Top 10 LGBT Network in the Global Diversity List 2021.
March 2021 ✓
In a company letter sent to US Congress in response to Republican senators asking why Amazon removed the book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by conservative author Ryan T. Anderson from its platforms, Amazon’s Brian Huseman, vice president, Public Policy, states: “We have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
March 2022 ×
Despite Amazon’s longstanding association with the Emerald City, Seattle Pride announces that it will not partner with Amazon for the 2022 Seattle Pride Parade “because of their financial donations to politicians who actively propose and support anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation, oppose pro-LGBTQIA+ and other human rights legislation, and for allowing anti-LGBTQIA+ organisations to raise funds from their AmazonSmile program.”
July 2022 ×
Amazon workers in No Hate at Amazon march in the Seattle Pride parade, in part because of the sale of books they consider to be anti-trans.
December 2024 ×
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Amazon seemingly kowtows to his anti-wokeism by removing its support for transgender rights from its website, reports the Washington Post.
VERDICT
Let’s be honest: there are probably more ticks here than you were expecting. But that last cross is doing a lot of heavy lifting and follows other recent examples that contradict Amazon’s previous record of support for the LGBTQ+ community. Does it show that Bezos – and by implication Amazon – blows with the prevailing political wind? Because, although he’s at times been a friend to LGBTQ+ people, that doesn’t mean we wholly trust him. At a time when hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community is rising, we need our true allies to be bold enough to stand unequivocally with us.
This is a feature appearing in issue 371 of Attitude magazine, on sale in print and digital now. Order Attitude magazine issue 371 in print now, or in digital on the links below on Apple News+ and the Attitude app.