Imagine, in the age of chivalry, a lord who arrives at every battle with his forces - but who delays his arrival until the battle is already won, and always joins the winning side.

You might well say arriving late is better than not arriving at all. Perhaps there are some last pockets of resistance, you wouldn't turn down his help sweeping those up.

Alternately, you might say they are cowardly, insincere opportunists. They ended up on on the right side, but the timing calls their sincerity into doubt.

To some people, all LGBTQ 'activism' by Fortune 500 companies looks like this. Especially if their 'activism' doesn't extend to their middle east or russian divisions.

I do wonder just how early people are required to come to the 'battle' in order to escape your scorn. If someone was an adult in the 80s, are they an insincere opportunist if they weren't speaking out in favor of gay rights then? What if they were an adult in the 1960s and didn't support the Stonewall riots?

As a gay person, it means something to me that a company is willing to speak out publicly in support of its LGBTQ employees. No-one is perfect and no-one is free from hypocrisy. All of us have probably blown with the wind on certain social issues where we could have spoken up earlier if we'd had more courage and moral clarity.

This holier-than-thou cynicism about corporate LGBTQ activism is extremely destructive, in my opinion. In the final analysis it only gives succour to those who are opposed to LGBTQ rights. For actual gay people, the massive shift in corporate attitudes to LGBTQ employees is a huge deal, and has real practical benefits in our lives.

Edit: By the way, a little bit of internet research suggests that Raytheon are actually pretty above average in their support for LGBTQ rights. E.g. they have been praised by the HRC: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/defense-giant-raytheon-pr... And here's some news coverage dating back to 2006: https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006...

I find the rest of your post a little bit confusing. I don't think you are saying that you want Raytheon to stop making tweets in support of LGBTQ rights. But also, you seem to be hinting that there are somehow potentially bad consequences arising from Raytheon, or other corporations, making these sorts of statements. As the bad consequences are only sketched in the vaguest terms, it's difficult to know what to make of the idea. For example, you seem to suggest that people might be more alert to the bad things that Raytheon does if they didn't publicly support their LGBTQ employees. But you don't have to wind back the clock many decades to get to a time when they didn't do this. It doesn't seem that people had much more success in compelling Raytheon to stop making arms sales in the 70s or 80s than they do now.

I do agree that people back then appear to care less about arm dealings. I beleive they care more today then back then. And that people also care about a lot of other unethical practices certain large corporations get involve with. I think people always cared, but information didn't flow as fast, broadly, and independently as today, and even that is being fought against (again by large corporations). If you don't think diversion coupled with virtue signaling is a thing and that it is elaborated precisely for their desired effect, fine. I shared my perspective and the one many people beleive is undoubtful at this point.

Weapon dealing / wars are beside the point perhaps but directly relate to the whole thread: Hollywood propaganda.

Twitter is a lot of posturing, and the tweet is posturing "look how progressive/ethical/whatever I am". GP is simply pointing out that yes, supporting gay rights is a good thing, but the person overall is still a piece of shit for all the atrocities they implicitly support. The gay rights stance, even if genuine, simply can't balance that out.

You may view the tweet as 'posturing', but we have seen no evidence that it is not the expression of a sincerely held belief. This is the sort of attitude that I was talking about when I said that HN seems to like to spin complex narratives around LGBTQ rights advocacy. Sometimes people speak out for LGBTQ rights because...they support LGBTQ rights. And that's all there is to it.

If you don't like other stuff that Raytheon does, then it makes a lot more sense to criticise them for doing that other stuff than it does to spin speculative narratives around the motivation behind their pro-LGBTQ tweets.