"Stories need a hook," said a spokesperson for UNITE HERE Local 11. The union had been fighting the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air for over a year, but it wasn't until LGBT activists got on board that their efforts found traction.

Jonathan Alcorn / Reuters

For more than a year before the Beverly Hills Hotel became the target of a boycott, a Los Angeles labor union had been trying to draw attention to the fact that it is owned by the sultan of Brunei, a tiny Southeast Asian nation with laws criminalizing homosexuality. Almost no one cared. How this went from a failed ploy in a labor dispute to an advocacy campaign involving celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres to Jay Leno is one that could only take place in the age of internet outrage, when relationships between American activists and social media go a long way in determining which human rights causes blow up and which ones go virtually unnoticed in the United States. UNITE HERE Local 11 spokeswoman Leigh Shelton told BuzzFeed that the union began trying to shine the spotlight on Brunei's LGBT rights record in February 2013, as part of an effort to drive business away from the Hotel Bel-Air and the Beverly Hills Hotel, both owned by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's Dorchester Collection hotel company. The effort stemmed from a feud stretching back to the 1990s, when the union was shut out from representing the Beverly Hills Hotel after it went through renovations. The union was shut out in similar fashion from the Hotel Bel-Air in 2009. In researching the hotel's ownership, UNITE HERE discovered that Brunei has actually long had a law criminalizing sodomy well before the new Sharia code, dating back to its days under British colonial rule. The union produced a video urging people to "take a stand against homophobia" and "dump" the Beverly Hills Hotel. "The Beverly Hills Hotel is owned by the nation of Brunei, where it is illegal to be gay," the video proclaimed.

That campaign went nowhere. "Stories need a hook," Shelton said. "I just don't think it had a hook at the time." Last month, that changed: National organizations called for boycotts, and personalities including Sharon Osbourne and Richard Branson took to Twitter to urge their followers to join them in staying away from the hotel. On Monday, former Tonight Show host Jay Leno added fuel to the fire when he joined a rally outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, calling for the sultan to either change the law or sell the hotel. Organizations ranging from the Motion Picture & Television Fund to the International Women's Media Foundation to The Hollywood Reporter have canceled events at the hotel as well. DeGeneres tweeted:

The "hook" was that the sultan was going to impose a new penal code based on Sharia law, which would punish homosexuality — as well as adultery — with death by stoning. The sultan had actually announced the new proposal in October, but few in the United States noticed nor made the connection to the hotel. Nor did it get much notice when a United Nations spokesperson made a statement on April 11 condemning the proposal, which was originally set to go into effect on April 22. But then, longtime LGBT and labor activist Cleve Jones — who had consulted for UNITE HERE in its fight with the Dorchester hotels — saw a mention of the U.N. statement on his Facebook feed. "That caught my attention," Jones said. "I knew who this guy was and I remember thinking to myself that maybe this will get people to pay attention. I started waiting two days, maybe three days, and see who would pick up on it. And nothing." So he posted about it on Facebook and tagged several major players in LGBT rights and Hollywood, including Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin, screenwriter and LGBT activist Dustin Lance Black, and film producer Bruce Cohen. His post was shared over 400 times.

The next day, the Gill Action — an organization set up by tech mogul Tim Gill to advance LGBT rights — issued a statement announcing it would move an upcoming conference connecting donors with state-level LGBT organizations to another venue. This was a rare public statement from the organization, which generally likes to keep its name out of the press. (A spokesperson declined to comment on when the organization learned about the Sharia proposal.) "In light of the horrific anti-gay policy approved by the government of Brunei, Gill Action made the decision earlier today to relocate its conference from the Beverly Hills Hotel to another property," Gill Action Executive Director Kirk Fordham said in a statement to the LGBT publications that first reported the move, including the The Washington Blade, which ran the story under the headline "Secret gay donor conference moved from Brunei-owned hotel." A week later, according to Feminist Majority spokeswoman Stephanie Hallett, it pulled an event scheduled for May 5 and instead organized a rally in front of the hotel joined by UNITE HERE, the California Women's Law Center, and several LGBT organizations — including Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The campaign against the hotel has largely focused on the Sharia code's potential impact on LGBT people, but the policing of women's sexual relationships has often been the major focus in other places where versions of Sharia law have been implemented. Indonesia's Banda Aceh province — the only other place in Southeast Asia with a version of Sharia — originally stipulated a punishment of death by stoning for adultery but only 100 lashes for homosexuality. And because women are often expected to defend sexual honor, harsh punishments tend to be meted out disproportionately for sexual misconduct in other countries with Sharia-based systems, according to a report from the organization Women Living Under Muslim Laws. The U.S.'s largest LGBT rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign, gave its imprimatur to the boycott on Friday, publicly calling on other organizations with events scheduled for the Dorchester hotels to stay away. On Tuesday, HRC took aim again, introducing a campaign under the hashtag #callitout highlighting the apparent hypocrisy of the Dorchester Collection's same-sex wedding business.