A Glass Closet Shatters

The sad story of John Browne, chief executive of British Petroleum, undone by a society that changed more swiftly than he could. My take in the Sunday Times here. A reader remonstrates:

You made a lot of good points today, but I think you're insensitive to one aspect of this:  it's all very well to say that today's Britain has become largely tolerant of homosexuality, but this is clearly not the case in many of the countries in which BP operates.  An openly gay CEO could have created enormous difficulties for BP in places like Saudi Arabia, for example.  So I think you have to look at the context of the oil world to understand fully why Browne could not exit his "glass closet".

I certainly buy the notion that it might have made his life more difficult. But I'm not sympathetic to the idea that a wealthy Westerner should compromise his integrity to appease Muslim bigots or Catholic bigots. If a man of privilege cannot confront prejudice, who can? And why should profit come before personal integrity?