Standing Up to the LGBTQ Bullies

We’ve seen countless examples over the last few years of how pushy the LGBTQetc movement has become. One organization has stood at the forefront of bullying corporations into toeing the Pride party line: the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

The name sounds benign enough, right? I mean, who doesn’t want to campaign to support human rights? But the HRC has spent over two decades coercing companies into getting behind the LGBTQ (and sometimes Y) agenda, whether consumers agree or not.

One of the most encouraging signs that we’ve seen out of corporate America recently is the spate of companies rejecting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and other left-wing initiatives. Many of these corporations mention one specific organization in their announcements about turning away from far-left pandering. If you guessed the HRC, you’re right.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story about this phenomenon last week, but it didn’t come to my attention until this week. The article leads with Ford’s email to employees that it is distancing itself from the HRC and its index of LGBT-friendly companies, but there’s more.

“Other companies dialing down diversity initiatives this summer also said they would distance themselves from HRC: Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, rural retailer Tractor Supply and distiller Brown-Forman, which makes Jack Daniel’s,” the WSJ reports. “On Tuesday, Molson Coors also said it would stop working with the group.”

“The companies didn’t elaborate on why they highlighted HRC in their announcements,” the report continues. “Nearly all of them had ranked well on an index that HRC uses to score companies by their LGBTQ-friendly policies.”

Related: 'Go Woke, Go Broke' in Reverse: Tractor Supply Abandons DEI and Other Left-Wing Initiatives

In Ford’s case, the auto giant is removing its name from other surveys as well, citing the time and effort involved in parsing and submitting employee data. But it’s the pivot away from the HRC that grabs the headlines for Ford and other huge corporations.

The HRC bullies companies through its “Corporate Equality Index,” in which the organization gives corporations a score based on the criteria of “Workforce Protections,” “Inclusive Benefits,” and “Supporting an Inclusive Culture & Corporate Social Responsibility.” Under the banner of “Responsible citizenship,” the HRC takes points away from a corporation’s score for what Wikipedia describes as “a large-scale official or public anti-LGBTQ blemish on their recent records.”

Naturally, the HRC is calling out some of these companies. After all, you wouldn’t expect the Rainbow Mafia to stay quiet.

“HRC has begun calling attention to companies distancing themselves from its goals,” the WSJ reports. “Visitors to its website in recent days encountered an invitation to send a protest message to companies. ‘This isn’t just policy. It’s personal,’ the group said, alongside logos for Ford and others.”

For almost as long as the HRC has published the index, large corporations have quaked in fear of the backlash from the gay community if it received a poor score. Now we’re beginning to see companies deciding not to care what the HRC thinks. Of course, some of this stems from companies remembering who their consumer base is.

“The Tractor Supply change, in the right direction, by the way, after taking the wrong direction on this issue, came by action of its corporate board, and it came after there was just a lot of pressure and awful lot of pushback coming from the rather conservative customer base of Tractor Supply,” Albert Mohler pointed out in his podcast on Thursday. “John Deere, pretty much in the same situation. Lowe’s, home construction, home improvement materials, let’s just say that’s not an overwhelmingly liberal customer base.”

This wave of corporations saying goodbye to the HRC is encouraging, but is it a trend? Will we continue to see big companies standing up and refusing to bow to the LGBTQ bullies? I hope we'll continue to see brands that put consumers before far-left activism.