PR and HR executives at American Express, Walt Disney and Microsoft better brace themselves for attack from the religious right, because their companies are the top three most gay-friendly corporations in the United States, according to a 50-best list published last week by the Gay Financial Network (gfn.com). Lucent Technologies and Xerox Corporation rounded out the top five.

According to the website, gfn.com’s team of experts spent weeks combing through economic reports, analyst findings and corporate policies on gay, lesbian and HIV policies. The companies were analyzed in terms of revenues, growth, economic power, as well as how they ranked on issues of corporate policies relating to diversity training, employee benefits, employee groups, nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the sale or purchase of goods and services, advertising to the gay market and having in place a ban on any negative stereotypes based on sexual orientation, among others.

“All of the companies on this year’s list had great policies for gays and lesbians, but we went a lot further to ascribe a rating to these companies," said Walter Schubert, founder and CEO of gfn.com. “For example, we looked at whether a company advertised in the gay media or included sexual orientation in its diversity training.”