CALIFORNIA, October 6, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As the world mourns the loss of a successful entrepreneur and technological visionary, pro-family advocates have two other, and seemingly contradictory, reasons to remember Apple CEO Steve Jobs: his uncompromising stance against pornography, and his company’s stance in favor of gay “marriage.”
Jobs has elicited praise and criticism from both ends of the ideological spectrum for his involvement in controversial social issues.
Supporters of traditional marriage were dismayed by his company’s public opposition to Proposition 8, an amendment to the California state constitution that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Apple famously donated $100,000 to the anti-Proposition 8 campaign.
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The company has also repeatedly rejected the pro-life, pro-family Manhattan Declaration iPhone app, bowing to pressure from homosexual activists.
Those same activists, however, were in for a surprise if they thought Jobs would allow Apple products to be infiltrated with the worst that the homosexual sub-culture has to offer.
Last year, his company rejected “Gay New York: 101 Can’t-Miss Places,” an app created by freelance travel writer Anthony Grant.
Grant, who writes for Forbes and The New York Times, called the decision “homophobic and discriminatory to the point of hostile.”
Apples’ rejection of the app, which was based on its inclusion of graphic sexual pictures, is part of a principled stance against pornography, for which Jobs has become famous. The former CEO set himself apart from competitors by keeping his company’s products porn-free by rejecting any and all pornographic apps.
In an email exchange with a customer posted on techcrunch.com last April, Jobs said that he believed he had a “moral responsibility” to reject pornographic content.
“Folks who want porn can buy [an] Android phone,” he wrote.
Jobs also defended his stance against Gawker.com writer Ryan Tate, who objected to an Apple commercial calling the iPad a “revolution.”
“Revolutions are about freedom,” Tate wrote.
Jobs responded that Apple products offer users “freedom from porn,” and told Tate that he “might care more about porn” when he had children.
The entrepreneur, who was adopted, leaves behind four of his own children. He was a devoted father, by the account of family and friends.
“While Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal and CNET continue to drone on about the impact of the Steve Jobs era, I won’t be pondering the MacBook Air I write on or the iPhone I talk on. I will think of the day I saw him at his son’s high school graduation,” wrote Lisen Stromberg, Jobs’ neighbor, in an article that appeared in the Palo Alto Patch.
“There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma and walked on into his own bright future leaving behind a good man and a good father who can be sure of the rightness of this, perhaps his most important legacy of all,” Stromberg continued.
Jobs is also being remembered for his presence at another graduation at Stanford University in 2005, where he delivered a moving reflection on the reality of death during his commencement speech.
Recounting his experience with being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004, Jobs commented: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”