Dear Mr. Cook,

We’re an Apple family. My wife and I have been using Macs exclusively for years (saving the Dell laptop I have from work). We use iPhones. We even have a Time Machine. We’ve all but decided to swap out our old Roku for an Apple TV. We’re not techies; neither of us could tell you how Apple works versus how PC’s work. It’s all wizardry as far as we’re concerned. Our preferance for Macs is probably an aesthetic thing. We just like them.

However, your recent op-ed in the Washington Post has made me wonder if I should start figuring Linux out.

This isn’t about me disagreeing with you. Unlike many on the left, I don’t screen my brands for political correctness. You’re allowed to have whatever opinion you want on Indiana’s RFRA law.

But this, this is a problem:

What is this? This the largest retailer of Apple Products in Saudi Arabia. It’s located at the Mall of Arabia in Jeddah.

Are you, Mr. Cook, aware of what they do to gay people in Saudi Arabia?

How many executions in Saudi Arabia do you suppose have been recorded on an iPhone? Do you ever wonder about things like that?

Or take the United Arab Emirates, a country you visited less than six months ago, in order to open up markets to your product. Did you know that they still punish homosexual acts with imprisonment, fines, chemical castration, and even death?

If you know these things, do you care?

If you do care, do you just not care enough to forgo the potential profits?

And with all of that unanswered, just how seriously am I supposed to take your opposition to a law that has never once, the 28 states that have similar laws, been used to deny services to a gay person?

Because I’m rapidly approaching the conclusion that your opposition is but a nexus of bandwagon-jumping and empty posturing. I’m considering the notion that you like to stand up for your political ideals when its convenient and risk-free. Harder to meet with the Sheikh of Dubai when you got a fatwa hangin’ on your head, huh?

Hypocrisy is an easy charge to bring. We are all of us guilty of not following our principles perfectly in every instance. But to meet with a head of a goverment that castrates gays in December, and to issue a cri de couer against a state religious freedom law, that could be used to discriminate against gays, the following March constitutes a level of hypocrisy that fairly begs to be called out.

Thus, Mr. Cook, your moral preening on this issue is repellent. Your self-righteousness is nauseating. And I would kindly ask that if you are prepared to leave your politics at the door when doing business in sharia states, perhaps you will be good enough to do the same to your fellow countrymen.

Otherwise, Mr. Cook, I may just decide to replace my MacMini with a System76 Meerkat, my iPhone with a Samsung Galaxy, and to get that Roku 3 instead. If Mozilla can be purged, so can my house.

Yours,

Andrew J. Patrick