Gay Corporate Warrior Wants to Bring 'Full Equality' to Red America

In 1992, Tim Gill was living a Rocky Mountain version of the familiar tech dream. He’d earned degrees in applied mathematics and computer science and then, in 1981, founded the publishing-software company Quark in his apartment, with a $2,000 loan from his parents. When Quark took off, Gill became rich. He eventually sold his stake for half a billion dollars. But in 1992, he was merely the multimillionaire chairman of a successful tech company.

Gill was also gay. This aspect of his life, too, had a kind of dream-like quality. He came out to his parents as a teenager and was immediately accepted. In his early career, comfortably ensconced in the tech world’s creative class, he rarely encountered prejudice or hostility. His gayness was never an issue.

Then, in 1992, groups in Colorado began pushing a ballot measure, Amendment 2, that would prevent nondiscrimination ordinances against gays and lesbians and repeal those already in effect in Denver, Boulder, and Aspen. “It was a shock,” says Gill. What was more shocking, though, was that some of his own employees supported the ban, openly and at work.

Feeling he had to fight back, Gill donated several thousand dollars toward defeating the measure. But they lost.

The ratification of anti-homosexuality sentiment in a place where Gill had felt comfortable and accepted was so upsetting that it set him on a path to become ever more deeply involved.

Gill became radicalized. “I got depressed and angry,” he says. “But, in the end, my response was to say, ‘Well, how am I going to fix this?

On April 28, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments and may issue a ruling legalizing gay marriage this summer. For people like Gill, who’ve worked years for this moment, the victory so close at hand is a source of giddy anticipation. It also raises a big question: What comes next?

Gill and a bipartisan group of major donors will reveal the answer at the OutGiving conference on April 30 in Dallas, but they’ve given Bloomberg Businessweek a preview: They’re launching a campaign, modeled on the marriage effort, to pass nondiscrimination laws in the dozens of states that don’t have them.

And they’ll also try to halt or unwind “religious freedom” acts like those that raised a furor in Indiana and Arkansas.

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