(LifeSiteNews) — More and more large corporations are choosing not to actively participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) annual “Corporate Equality Index” that judges and ranks large companies based on their fealty to the ever-evolving will of LGBTQ+ activists.
In recent months, Ford Motor Company, Harley Davidson, Jack Daniel’s, Molson Coors beer, and Lowe’s have parted ways with HRC’s yearly “report card.” Other corporate giants such as John Deere and Tractor Supply have in a more general way stepped away from their commitments to woke DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) standards that entail the promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism.
In a statement published in August after Harley Davidson distanced itself from the LGBTQ+ lobbying Goliath’s strong-armed tactics, HRC insisted that the “choice to back away from the Corporate Equality Index is an impulsive decision fueled by fringe right-wing actors and MAGA extremists who believe they can bully their way into dismantling initiatives that help everyone thrive in the workplace.”
After the high-profile desertions, HRC has gone so far as to declare a “State of Emergency” for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S., suggesting that it’s now open season on gays, lesbians, transgenders, and others who live their lives in allegiance to everything the rainbow flag stands for.
By sounding a false alarm about its favorite bogeyman contrivance — conservative “attacks” on LGBTQ+ folks — HRC has developed an extremely profitable way to earn a living over the years.
In 2023, records show that HRC’s total revenue was just shy of $50 million, with over 90% coming from contributions.
Despite the fact that a handful of corporations have abandoned ship, 595 businesses still maintain a perfect CEI score from HRC. Among them ae Airbus, Amazon, American Airlines, American Express, Apple, and AT&T. And these are just a sampling of the many companies listed under the first letter of the alphabet.
The Corporate Equality Index racket
Launched in 2002, the organization found its Corporate Equality Index (CEI) to be a useful tool to increasingly put the screws to large corporations, forcing them to expand their commitments to LGBTQ+ “rights” by constantly upping requirements and scoring standards.
A recent report by the Associated Press explains that over the years HRC has moved the goal posts for corporations seeking to obtain a perfect CEI score:
In 2004, the index placed more emphasis on providing comprehensive benefits to domestic partners and improving health care coverage for transgender workers. Later it added categories that gave employers points for promoting equality in the broader LGBTQ+ community.
In 2019, it specified that supplier diversity programs, which encourage companies to work with minority-owned or veteran-owned businesses, must include LGBTQ+ suppliers.
By 2022, the index said employers should offer same-sex spouses and domestic partners the same benefits as other couples for in-vitro fertilization and adoption, and that employers must create gender-transition guidelines, among other changes.
HRC constantly “ratchets up its criteria every two years to require stepped-up corporate pandering to merit a continued ‘perfect’ score,” noted World Net Daily’s Peter LaBarbera in a stunning exposé published in 2023.
The anti-conservative CEI scorecard makes no pretense of objectivity in its quest for “queer equality in the workplace,” as one HRC web posting describes it. The CEI even contains a punishment provision that essentially blocks compliant corporations from supporting Christian and pro-family groups opposed to the LGBTQ agenda: Any company found “guilty” of an anti-LGBTQ “blemish” will have 25 points deducted from its score.
The goal and manipulative genius of the CEI is to first push corporations to a 100 percent “perfect” score, for which they are put on HRC’s list of the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality.” Then the corporation is effectively locked into the system with its ever-escalating demands perpetually; if it refuses, it risks being cast as a backslider that is less than fully LGBT “affirming.”
HRC itself has brazenly admitted on its website that it has “once again raised the bar for what it means to be a corporate ally for LGBTQ+ inclusion. This year’s survey was harder than ever before.”
Well over a thousand companies are held hostage by HRC’s CEI, contributing to the erosion of the institutions of marriage and family — the real things — and putting the health and well-being of gender dysphoric youth at risk. As LaBarbera has noted:
More than any other group, HRC “branded” the homosexual agenda, choosing an equal sign as its logo as it promoted innocuous-sounding euphemisms like “equality,” “love conquers hate,” and “love is love” to mobilize sentiment for its revolutionary crusade redefining civil rights.
But behind the clever marketing, HRC was in solidarity with other “gay” militants, applying the same radical egalitarian model equating homosexual relationships to the traditional marital bond between husband and wife. Treating “gay” and now “trans” people differently amounts to “hate” and bigotry,” according to their formula. And HRC staffers have not shied away from using false narratives to build “gay” power and defame Christians, their main enemy.
Hopefully, more corporations will come to understand that whatever their current level of obeisance to HRC will never be enough.
