My last experience at Home Depot:
My dad, a lifetime carpenter, was helping me fix some things around the house. We go to HD to buy some nails and he asks this old timer where the nails are. He shrugs and walks away. My dad calls him a lazy, no-good waste of a human being and a few other choice words. :-) After that, we went to a local hardware store and got exactly what we needed.
Two things come to mind:
Minimum wage = minimum effort
Big places like Home Depot are more for ripping off the yuppie homeowners than for people who know their business.
I don't care what their policy is on gays, that's the corporation's business. They are just pandering to suburbanites who make up their customer base. It is supposedly good business these days to pretend to care. I see right through it, but the sheep don't pay attention to the real details, by and large.
I have a choice to shop there or go someplace else. I exercise that choice judiciously in all my business affairs.