The Corporate Equality Index and the Rise of Woke Capitalism

Here’s why big companies yield to the far-left wishes

Not a day goes by without being sucked into the LGBTQ movement. It is the trend of the times. Trans people and their gay allies prance around their pride flags, followed by caravans of ecstatic journalists who sing the praises of our “inclusive society”.

Standing aside those garrisons that occupy a disproportionately large political space are those who provide the funds to maintain that vast and sometimes hostile army: the big corporations. But as once happened in Nazi Germany, the funders are not necessarily the bosses; it is rather those who receive the funds who impose their will on the funders.

And their main tool to impose that will has a name: the Corporate Equality Index (CEI).

What Is the Corporate Equality Index?

The Corporate Equality Index (CEI), created in 2002, is a report published by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRCF) and is used to rate U.S. businesses on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors. The HRCF is presided over by Kelley Robinson, who worked as a political organizer for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. No surprise here.

The assessment criteria on which CEI is based to rate companies are as follows: “Workforce Protections”, “Inclusive Benefits”, “Supporting an Inclusive Culture and Corporate Social Responsibility”, as well as “Responsible Citizenship”.

Companies that obtain a perfect score (100 points) are given the title “Best Place to Work For LGBTQ Equality.” In 2022, more than 800 U.S. companies earned that designation, which explains why we are inundated with ads promoting the LBGTQ movement.

The CEI is part of a bigger movement called ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance), which is some kind of framework used to assess an organization’s business practices and performance on various sustainability and ethical issues.

A Pressure Group

As HRCF sends representatives to corporations to ensure that all its requirements are met, the latter are thus under constant pressure to deliver good results. And much like young students are eager to show their positive report cards to their parents, corporations are quick to communicate their good results to the public.

A simple Google search returns dozens of press releases of companies gladly announcing their perfect score. Among these are Disney (of course), Lilly, Sun Life, Amtrak, Diageo, Bloomberg, the Bank of Montreal, and Lenovo.

According to author Nicole Christine Raeburn (Changing Corporate America from Inside Out: Lesbian and Gay Workplace Rights), companies feel compelled to change policies that have earned them a poor score due to bad press. This has led to a competitive atmosphere among them to stay current with the latest LGBTQ-related inclusive policies.

But behind these exercises of virtue hides a desire to tap a lucrative market. A survey by Harris Interactive found that “approximately two-thirds of LGBTQ adults, or roughly 66%, would be very or somewhat likely to remain loyal to a company or brand they believed to be supportive of the LGBTQ community, even when less supportive competitors offered lower prices or greater convenience.”

Knowing that millennials have been brainwashed into adopting pro-LGBTQ ideas, that market becomes even more attractive for companies.

We have recently seen, however, the limits of these pro-LGBTQ ideas and policies with calls for boycotts of Bud Light, Target and other big names over their promotion of transgender personalities. According to Bloomberg, references to Pride Month “in filings, presentations and transcripts from April to June at more than 900 of the largest U.S. companies dropped almost 40% from this time last year, the first decline in five years.”

That’s not all. An extensive poll conducted earlier this year by the Kaiser Family Foundation and The Washington Post showed that Americans overwhelmingly opposed the foundational precepts of transgender activism.

Despite these clashes, Human Rights Campaign need not worry: the Corporate Equality Index will withstand major storms, but big corporations may have to moderate their LGBTQ zeal for business common sense. Reason, after all, must prevail over fanaticism.

Sources

Amtrak, Bank of Montreal, Bloomberg, Bloomberg via MSN, Diageo, Disney, Forbes, Lenovo, Lilly, Sun Life, Tablet, The Epoch Times, The New York Post #1, #2, #3