Businesses Need to Listen to Their Customers, Not Progressive Activists!

John Stossel on Jun 4, 2025

Why does Uber make videos where people say, "I'm non-binary or genderqueer"?

And why does Lockheed Martin fund floats at Pride parades?

Because companies want to raise their score on the Human Rights Campaign's "Corporate Equality Index."

Equality is a good thing. I support human rights. But the Human Rights Campaign? That's something else.

"They have nothing to do with actual human rights," says Robby Starbuck in my new video. "They're an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization that pushes topics about transgenderism into the workplace."

Starbuck uses his social media following to criticize the many companies that partner with the Human Rights Campaign.

The Campaign "does great harm," he says, because companies that want a high score must do things like pay for trans employees' gender reassignment surgery and fund puberty blockers for employees' kids.

I push back, "I know people who've had the surgery and they seem happier!"

"If you're an adult and you make a set of decisions I disagree with, that's your prerogative," replies Starbuck. "I don't want to give my money to a company that's going to use it to fund any sex changes of any child."

People can debate the age when you're considered competent to medically change your gender. What surprises me is how many companies suck up to the Human Rights Campaign by paying for it.

Google even brags about providing a "trans liaison" to help people transition.

Even some of your Amtrak tax subsidy goes to pay for this stuff. Amtrak's "Lead Environmental Specialist" touts "education on personal pronouns."

To raise their Corporate Equality Index scores, companies are encouraged to donate to LGBTQ+ groups -- like the Human Rights Campaign! That helps the Campaign collect $42 million in tax-free money.

The more I looked at the organization, the less it seems to be about human rights, and the more it seems to be about left-wing advocacy.

Its homepage features protesters holding signs saying, "I will aid and abet abortion."

When I point that out to Starbuck, he says, "Yeah, which humans? Which rights? Apparently, if you're a small enough human, you don't have rights."

The Campaign's president says its Corporate Equality Index is "about partnership with businesses to make workplaces as inclusive as possible for LGBTQ+ people."

But today, most businesses are inclusive, and in America, LGBT people are more accepted than ever. Twenty years ago, 37% of Americans supported gay marriage. Forty-five percent said gay relationships are moral. Today, support for gay marriage is at 69% and 64% consider gay relationships moral.

Yet, as life gets better for LGBT people, the Human Rights Campaign declared a "national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans!"

"This is a crisis right now!" said HRC president Kelley Robinson.

I think I know why she said that. If activists acknowledge that Americans have come to accept LGBT people, the Campaign might go out of business. One HRC executive says "we are never going to reach a destination."

Of course not. There's money to be made and leftist propaganda that needs spreading.

Starbuck, by pointing out what the HRC really does, has persuaded some companies to stop sucking up.

Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe's, Molson Coors, Toyota, Tractor Supply, Walmart and others announced that they will no longer participate in the Index.

"We came along and told people the story and the backtracking began," says Starbuck.

The Campaign's president says, "What we're seeing from these companies is short-sighted."

Maybe.

Businesses can join whatever lists they want, but they ought to do what's good for their business. That means listening to customers, not progressive activists.

"At the end of the day," says Starbuck, "that's all people want, is for businesses to do their business. Not to virtue signal ... or to perpetuate a political ideology."

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Every Tuesday at JohnStossel.com, Stossel posts a new video about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media."