This last Pride month, a site called Popular Information revealed that at least nine American corporation were donating millions to anti-LGBTQ candidates while receiving a perfect 100 score on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index ranking the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality.”
Now there’s a recently unveiled campaign called “Zero for Zeros” which is revealing these companies and asking them to stop their harmful donations.
These companies include many that you probably use every day like Amazon, AT&T, American Airlines, Best Buy, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dell, Facebook, General Mills, Google, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Pfizer, T-Mobile, UPS, Visa and Whirlpool. But the campaign’s first-wave is focusing on just 12 companies.
The campaign is asking companies to stop giving to members of Congress who’ve received a 0 percent rating from the HRC’s Congressional Scorecard over the last two congressional sessions.
“They’ve been given many opportunities to show a minimal level of support for the LGBT community and have rejected those opportunities at every step of the way,” writes Longtime LGBTQ activist and Zero for Zeros’ campaign manager Lane Hudson to the CEOs. “Their actions and the values that they represent are completely out of step with your company’s support for the LGBT community.”
In a statement, Husdon said, “These companies are some of the most well-known companies throughout the world and they support LGBT equality in many ways. Their political contributions to the most anti-gay members of Congress do not reflect the values they have expressed to their employees and the public.”
Even if corporations slap on a rainbow logo and call themselves “allies,” many may give to anti-LGBTQ politicians because of their policies benefitting corporations.
Zero for Zeros is asking people to join its Facebook group as it works to defund anti-LGBTQ politicians.
