The top Minnesota-based executives with Thomson Reuters have come out against the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
"We believe the Minnesota marriage amendment, if passed, would limit our ability to recruit and retain top talent," Mike Suchsland, president of legal, and Rick King, chief operations officer of technology, wrote to employees Friday morning. "For this reason, we do not believe that the amendment would be good for Thomson Reuters or the business community in the state."
Thomson Reuters, a leading business data and information company, joins General Mills and St. Jude Medical in opposing the marriage amendment.
Minnesota for Marriage, the lead group pushing the amendment, has been trying to discourage businesses from opposing the measure. Last month, the group staged a boycott of General Mills when the company announced its opposition to the amendment.
On Thursday, Minnesota for Marriage touted a new study by CNBC identifying what it found to be the 10 most business-friendly states in the nation. Minnesota for Marriage noted that nine of those states have passed marriage amendments.
"The claim that the passage of the marriage protection amendment will hurt Minnesota's economy is a complete myth," said John Helmberger, board chairman of Minnesota for Marriage. "If anything, the opposite is true. The CNBC study is yet another in a string of studies that consistently show states with a marriage protection amendment in their constitution are among our top performing economic states."
Helmberger notes that passage of the amendment will not change Minnesota law, which does not recognize same-sex unions.
"It simply puts our current definition of marriage beyond the reach of activist judges and politicians to change it without the consent of the voters," said Helmberger.
