How a powerful gay lobby group orchestrated the Big Business pressure campaign against North Carolina
The media has made a big deal during the last week about various
business interests coming out in opposition to the passage of House Bill 2,
North Carolina’s Bathroom Safety and Privacy Bill. These actions have left many
across the state and nation befuddled and scratching their heads. Why are some
executives with Fortune 1,000 companies and other businesses speaking out
against the bill, which essentially reiterates existing state policy and
includes a number of overtly pro-business provisions? And why is the president
of a national LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) activist group, the
Human Rights Campaign (HRC), delivering an opposition letter to N.C. Governor
Pat McCrory on behalf of these business interests just days after the bill
passed?
While LGBT activist groups would like for us all to believe this
was a spontaneous uprising of indignation among the state and national business
community, a closer examination reveals that it is actually part of a carefully
orchestrated campaign by the HRC and its network of allies.
Each year since 2002, the Human Rights Campaign has produced
what it calls a “Corporate Equality Index” to track and report efforts within
corporate America to promote acceptance of the LGBT agenda. A review of this
document for 2016 sheds quite a bit of light on the questions above.
In its report, the HRC discusses how it targets and rates
Fortune 1,000 companies and the nation’s 200 largest grossing law firms on
their friendliness to LGBT interests, and how it will penalize these entities
for “a large-scale official or public anti-LGBT blemish on their recent
records.” It also highlights how businesses that supply or contract with these
corporations and firms are pressured to adopt pro-LGBT policies, and how the
HRC seeks to deny corporate philanthropic funding to nonprofits that don’t
share its view.
For a group that purports to support “tolerance,” these ratings
and pressure tactics seem far from accepting of other viewpoints.
Since 2002, the HRC’s criteria for corporate ratings (on a scale
of 0-100) have continued to become increasingly aggressive and stringent and
now are based on three main criteria — a company’s: “global workplace
non-discrimination policy and/or global code of conduct;” “requirements for
contractors, vendors and suppliers (U.S.);” and “corporate giving
guidelines.” (Please
be sure to see the more detailed summary of the HRC’s corporate rating criteria
below.)
Well before the invention of the Corporate Equality Index, HRC
began working to organize LGBT employees within the nation’s largest companies,
establish “affinity groups” within these corporations, and identify well-placed
“executive champions” to push the LGBT agenda within the corporate structure.
As we have seen in other states—and now in North Carolina—when things happen
that the HRC doesn’t like, this network is activated, and allied corporations
and executives are unleashed to do the HRC’s bidding.
While I am sure a handful of Fortune 1,000 corporate executives
are personally supportive of HRC’s agenda, I fully expect others feel pressured
and compelled to act in order to avoid getting a black mark beside their
company’s name in the Corporate Equality Index and being targeted for boycotts
and other forms of retaliation. As you can see in the summary of the HRC’s
corporate rating criteria below, it is not only the omission of internal
pro-LGBT corporate policies, benefits and culture that can result in
retribution against a business, but it is also a failure by corporate
executives and others to demonstrate “public support for LGBT equality under
the law through local, state or federal legislation and initiatives.”
This is exactly why we have been hearing some business
representatives and others, who have clearly not read House Bill
2 and who have no idea what the bill actually says,
parroting the HRC’s talking points over and over again. This is also why the
delivery of a letter by the president of HRC to Governor McCrory bearing the
signatures of a handful of well-positioned corporate executives decrying the
passage of a pro-business bill doesn’t pass the smell test.
Far from an “organic” outrage by the business community, you
have to hand it to the Human Rights Campaign for orchestrating a masterful PR
and lobbying campaign against House Bill 2. Good spin does not make good
policy, however, and despite all the noise, North Carolina should continue to
resist the temptation to bow to bully tactics.
___________________________________________________________
The following is a summary of the criteria used in the Human
Rights Campaign “Corporate
Equality Index 2016.” Rating points are deducted if a company does not comply
with each of the following:
- Internal corporate employment policies
that include “sexual orientation” (15 points) and “gender identity” (15
points) and contractors and/or vendor standards that also include “sexual
orientation” and “gender identity” (5 points);
- Equivalent medical benefits must be
offered to different-sex spouses and same-sex partners or spouses (10
points); and other “soft” benefits like bereavement leave, supplemental
life insurance for a partner, and adoption assistance, etc. (10 points);
- Transgender-inclusive health insurance
coverage (10 points) including coverage for: sex reassignment surgery,
pharmaceutical coverage for hormone replacement therapies, reconstructive
surgical procedures related to sex reassignment, and “dollar maximums on
this area of coverage must meet or exceed $75,000;”
- A “firm-wide, sustained and accountable
commitment to diversity and cultural competency” (10 points) including:
- new hire training that the company’s
“nondiscrimination policy includes sexual orientation and gender
identity;”
- supervisor training on sexual orientation
and gender identity;
- integration of sexual orientation and
gender identity in professional development, skills-based or other
leadership training;
- senior management/executive performance
measures include LGBT diversity metrics;
- gender transition guidelines with
supportive restroom/facilities, dress code and documentation guidance;
etc.
- LGBT employee group or Diversity council
(10 points)
- LGBT-specific engagement in the following
(10 points):
- LGBT employee recruitment efforts;o
Supplier diversity program including LGBT suppliers;
- Marketing or advertising to LGBT
consumers (“e.g. advertising with LGBT content, advertising in LGBT media
or sponsoring LGBT organizations and events;”
- “Philanthropic support of at least one
LGBT organization or event;”
- “Demonstrated public support for LGBT
equality under the law through local, state or federal legislation and
initiatives.”
- Corporate giving guidelines “prohibiting
philanthropic giving to non-religious organizations that have a written
policy of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender
identity…” (5 points)
Finally, the Criteria Rating System and Methodology, states
“Employers will have 25 points deducted from their score for a large-scale
official or public anti-LGBT blemish on their recent record.”
