For over two decades, an annual ranking by America’s largest LGBT activist group has held sway over corporate America. Behind corporate sponsorship of Pride Parades and radical organizations like the Trevor Project looms the shadow of the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index (CEI). A new report from Them Before Us reveals that the majority of the criteria used to evaluate companies directly harm children.
Since 2002, the index has been a tool to pressure companies into complying with and promoting the HRC’s goals. These are divided into four categories: Non-discrimination Protections, Equitable Benefits for LGBT Workers, Supporting an Inclusive Culture, and Corporate Social Responsibility. Two of these categories, comprising 70 of the available 100 points, push companies to adopt policies and initiatives that harm children’s bodies, their relationships with their parents, their right to be known and raised by their own mother and father, and the stability of their households.
While consumers may be aware of the leftward tilt of companies like Starbucks, three years ago, they were surprised to discover ideologically-driven workplace policies and corporate initiatives were being championed by companies with a largely conservative customer base — many of which walked back these policies and left the index in response to boycotts.
The report defines “inclusive benefits” to include things like gender transition procedures with no age minimum. These experimental procedures prevent the healthy maturation of children’s bodies and surgically mutilate sexual organs. When an adult in a child’s life begins to live as a member of the opposite sex, the child is left to process the loss of the parent they knew as they are pushed to embrace their mother or father’s new identity.
Under the index’s “family formation” benefits, single employees and those in same-sex relationships are entitled to third-party reproduction, including donor conception and surrogacy. These arrangements intentionally separate children from one or both of their parents, allow the commodification of children through paid contracts, and, in the case of surrogacy, separates an infant from his birth mother for the sake of a commercial transaction.
Additionally, the CEI’s “inclusive benefits” criteria include applying spousal benefits to domestic partners — of the same or opposite sex. Decades of social science research demonstrates that children fare best when raised by their own married mother and father. “Domestic partnerships” — or cohabitation — do not offer the same benefits to children. In fact, cohabitation is a source of instability in a child’s life, with 50% of cohabiting relationships that result in children breaking up by the time the child turns nine. Incentivizing these relationships by treating them as no different than marriage causes children to be raised in less stable homes.
Inclusive benefits are not the only danger to children in the CEI. The index’s Corporate Social Responsibility criteria pressures companies into contributing to organizations that align with the Human Rights Campaign’s ideology. One such organization, the Trevor Project, was recorded encouraging a caller who described herself as a 15-year-old to leave home and live with a male coach who had encouraged her to pursue transition and had called her “beautiful.” More recently, Jonni Skinner, a 23-year-old destransitioner, testified before the California lawmakers that the Trevor Project had hung up on him when he was suicidal as a teenager because he had told the person on the other end of the line that he hated his body because he had transitioned.
Another organization that meets the index’s criteria is Point of Pride, which funds free chest binders, femme shapewear, and “transition” surgeries. Prisha Mosely described reaching out to a Point of Pride affiliate for help, only to have them completely ghost her when she explained that she was seeking medical detransition.
When a customer buys a bottle of nail polish, a burrito bowl, or a latte, they’re looking for a product, not to fund the medical transition of minors and the creation of intentionally motherless and fatherless children. Yet due to the influence of the Corporate Equality Index, a portion of their purchase may well be going to causes they would never support.
It’s vital that customers, as well as shareholders, understand what it means for a company to get a perfect 100 on the CEI and to start voting with their feet. Fortunately, companies have been taking the hint. In the past three years, many high-profile brands have abandoned the index, resulting in a 65% drop in participation from Fortune 500 companies. The tide is turning, and informed customers have the power to keep that momentum going.
Patience Sunne serves as the director of engagement at Them Before Us, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting children’s rights.
