As same-sex marriage laws move into state courts, corporations are starting to speak out in the fight for gay marriage

Not long ago, big companies ran from the gay-marriage debate.

In 2012, when North Carolina debated a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, not one Fortune 500 company headquartered in the state – they include Bank of America, Lowe's, Nucor, Duke Energy and VF, whose brands included North Face and Wrangler – took a stand on the issue.

In 2011, Target's chief executive, Gregg Steinhafel, said at the company's annual meeting that the big retailer would stay out of the debate over a proposed amendment to prohibit gay marriage in Minnesota. "Our position at this particular time is that we are going to be neutral on that particular issue, as we would be on other social issues that have polarizing points of view," Steinhafel said, awkwardly. His remarks disappointed many inside Target, which has an exemplary record when it comes to its own LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) employees.

The tide has turned. Last year, when the supreme court pondered the fate of the Defense of Marriage Act (Doma), which barred same-sex couples from receiving federal marriage benefits, a friend-of-the-court brief urging the repeal of Doma was signed by nearly 300 employers, including such big brands as Apple, CBS, Citigroup, eBay, Facebook, Google, Marriott, Mars, Nike, Starbucks and Walt Disney.* Goldman Sachs flew an equality flag outside its downtown New York headquarters when the court overturned Doma.

Now, as the battleground shifts backs to the states, businesses have allied itself with supporters of gay marriage in Oregon and Indiana. In Oregon, a liberal-leaning state, you might expect a youth-oriented company like Nike to back marriage equality, and it has – with a $280,000 donation to the cause. The Portland Trail Blazers, meantime, became the first NBA team to back gay marriage.

More surprising is the role of two big companies in Indiana, a Republican stronghold. Cummins, the world's largest manufacturer of diesel engines, and Eli Lilly, the big US maker of insulin products, each gave $100,000 to Freedom Indiana, a coalition of businesses, community groups and faith leaders trying to keep a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage off the ballot this fall.

Unlike Target's Gregg Steinhafel, Cummins' vice-president and chief administrative officer Marya Rose didn't mince any words when talking about the issue.

The amendment to ban gay marriage, she told the state legislature earlier this month, "sends a negative message that Indiana is not a place that welcomes people of all backgrounds and it jeopardizes our ability to be competitive in global markets and to attract and retain top talent." This "message of intolerance", she went on, "has no place in a state that professes to treat all citizens with dignity".

As if that weren't enough, Rose said putting a referendum before the voters would cause a great deal of harm. "Debates like this pit neighbor versus neighbor, elected official versus elected official," she said. "This debate causes hate to be spewed across social media. We don't need that debate here – not in Indiana."

Rob Smith, the senior director of corporate responsibility at Eli Lilly, helped kick off the Freedom Indiana campaign last year. "Our values and our commitment to diversity require us to take a stand in opposing this amendment," said Smith, according to press reports.

The reaction to the company's stand has been mostly positive, an Eli Lilly spokesmen told me this week by email. "We strongly believe that a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage is bad for business and bad for Indiana," said Greg Kueterman, director of corporate communications, citing the need to recruit and retain the best global talent.

Not all companies back gay marriage, of course. Willie Robertson, a star on the A&E reality show Duck Dynasty, was suspended from the program last year for making anti-gay remarks, but he was quickly reinstated after conservatives protested. The president of Chick-fil-A, which has donated to groups described as anti-gay, tweeted that it was "a sad day for our nation" after the supreme court overturned Doma.

Why have companies embraced marriage equality? One reason is that they are hearing from their own well organized LGBT workers and their supporters. "The network of (LGBT executives) and their allies is so much bigger today", says Bob Witeck, a Washington DC consultant who advises Fortune 500 companies including Marriott and American Airlines on LGBT issues. "When an issue arises, there's a group of people in senior positions who can make the business case for marriage equality."

Business is both reflecting and driving shifts in public opinion. Young people, in particular, support marriage equality, Witeck notes, and "people 35 and under are future customers and future employees."

There's no doubt where this story is going. Despite the waffling from Target's CEO, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed a marriage equality bill into law last year. "You changed the course of history," Dayton told supporters at a raucous outdoor ceremony. As many Minnesotans know, Dayton is the great-grandson of George Dayton, the founder of Dayton's – the department store that later became Target.

*Other companies opposing Doma before the court include Alcoa, Cisco, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Exelon, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Pfizer, Qualcomm, REI, Twitter, UBS, Viacom and Xerox.