Last year, Religious Right activists believed — without any evidence — that their boycott campaign against Starbucks over the company’s endorsement of marriage equality cost Starbucks billions. Ken Hutcherson, the Washington-based anti-gay activist and the favorite pastor of conservative leaders like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, seems to be under the impression that he dealt similar damage to Microsoft as part of his protest of the company’s pro-gay rights positions.
While speaking to a Tea Party Unity conference call, Hutcherson said that he led a mass-selloff of Microsoft stock on March 15 as a demonstration against the company’s stand for equality that cost the company tens of millions, if not billions, of dollars.
“I had Christians buying stock in Microsoft and they gave me one share and they kept the rest of their shares and gave me their proxy to go to the meetings here in Seattle and say that as stockholders we do not like the way you’re going down in our country, in our state, trying to change the laws and to push the homosexuality as a minority group,” Hutchreson explained. “I said if you guys don’t back off I’m gonna sell my stock and I’m gonna have everyone that bought sell stock; they laughed, they pooh-poohed me and they thought I was nuts so I said, alright just wait and see.”
He said that “there was a selloff of stock on March 15, $30 million in one day Microsoft lost and they have not recovered yet, someone told me the difference was $30 billion and I never can confirm that because they won’t allow that to come out.”
That would be pretty impressive if it were true.
Check a timeline of Microsoft stock for yourself.
Hutchreson started the campaign in 2008 and said he led the selloff campaign three years later.
On March 11, 2011, stock was valued at 25.68; on March 18 it was valued at 24.80. By March 25, the price was 25.62.
Today, the stock is valued at 32.43.
