Breaking the Power of HRC, the LGBTQ Mafia

As transgender orthodoxy seemingly takes ever deeper root in American education, entertainment and society, the LGBTQ lobby’s stranglehold on big business is finally loosening. A major organization that uses mafia-style tactics to pressure companies to conform to gender ideology has suffered setbacks.

Molson Coors Beverage Company, the company that makes Coors Light beer, announced to employees Tuesday that it will no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s Index of Equality in Business.

Robby Starbuck, a former music video director who has challenged and fought against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs from the left, revealed Molson Coors’ announcement at X.

“We will no longer participate in voluntary third-party ‘best in class’ rankings in the U.S., including the HRC corporate equality index,” Molson Coors’ leadership team wrote in the email to employees.

According to Axios, Molson Coors’ announcement follows similar opt-outs from Ford, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels and Lowe’s.

What is the HRC Equality Index?

The Human Rights Campaign bills itself as “the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization” and takes credit for “transforming the institutions and systems that shape our daily lives by advancing LGBTQ+-inclusive policies and practices in schools, workplaces, hospitals, communities, and beyond.”

That sounds noble. Americans are all about being “inclusive,” right? Yet many Americans vehemently disagree with HRC’s interpretation of this supposed “inclusion.” When it comes to transgender orthodoxy, “inclusion” means allowing men into women’s intimate spaces. In the corporate world, it means forcing employees to subscribe to the lie that a man can become a woman and vice versa. It means celebrating as “joyful” behaviors that many Americans would in good conscience consider sinful or depraved. The “inclusion” goes only one way.

How does HRC “transform” institutions? The corporate equality index gives each large company a rating to show how pro-“equality” the company is. Investors in the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement use the index to determine where their money goes, and this makes the index extremely powerful.

Like the Mafia or Al Capone, the Human Rights Campaign promises these brands protection from activist investors and left-wing shock troops in exchange for a generous cut. To demonstrate their “inclusion,” companies donate to LGBTQ groups, partner with transgender influencers like Dylan Mulvaney, and promote rainbow products. The idea that this message might be divisive among the millions of Americans who believe in traditional Christianity, Judaism, other religions that teach the concept of male and female, or just biology, has been nixed.

“I would say that the HRC certainly seems like a Marxist mafia that uses LGBTQ-related issues to further their far-left politics,” Starbuck told The Daily Signal. “The politics and the policies seem to be their real goal.”

Starbuck explained the HRC score as “a social credit system to promote left-wing ideas in corporate America.”

Sunlight is the best disinfectant

Why are companies abandoning the HRC index? Robby Starbuck asked them pointed questions, revealing just how controversial the index is. He reached out to companies like Molson Coors, asking how they respond to criticism about the index’s left-wing bias, and these business leaders realized that the index isn’t an unmitigated benefit to their brand.

Last year, two companies suffered huge losses after they began spreading increasingly radical LGBTQ messages, likely spurred on by the HRC index. Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney promoted Bud Light, and the publicity didn’t sit well with Bud Light customers. America’s best-selling beer lost its top spot in the sales charts.

Similarly, Target infamously launched a new transgender line of products, including “tuck” swimsuits designed to make male bodies look feminine. The designer behind many of the products also used the devil in designs such as “Satan loves pronouns.” Target’s sales plummeted after a massive backlash.

When both Bud Light and Target distanced themselves from this LGBTQ message, the Human Rights Campaign lowered their index ratings.

These examples revealed what many Americans already knew: that LGBTQ messaging drives many consumers away. The companies that have distanced themselves from HRC in recent weeks have consumer bases that are unlikely to agree with HRC’s messaging, leaving them vulnerable to a backlash of the kind that Bud Light and Target faced. As Robby Starbuck threatens to expose their woke advocacy to their non-woke consumers, they are rethinking their decision to take sides in the culture war.

HRC’s heated response

However, the Human Rights Campaign has not received these defections in a particularly positive light.

It launched a campaign urging supporters to “Tell Corporate America: Robby Starbuck is an extremist troll and dropping DEI initiatives is not okay!”

“Far-right extremists like social media influencer and failed political candidate Robby Starbuck are using Corporate America as pawns, demanding that they abandon LGBTQ+ people, people of color, women, and the disabled community by abandoning inclusion commitments,” HRC wrote. (Starbuck unsuccessfully ran as a write-in candidate for U.S. Congress in Tennessee in 2022.) “We’re forwarding your message to corporate leaders at Ford, Jack Daniel’s, Lowe’s, Tractor Supply Co., Harley-Davidson, and Deere & Co. who have cowardly succumbed to these anti-corporate demands.”

HRC’s claim that Starbuck is using Corporate America as a pawn is a classic case of psychological projection: HRC attributes to the opponent exactly what HRC does.

Starbuck wouldn’t be pressuring companies to reconsider their involvement in the index if HRC hadn’t launched it as an elaborate strategy to pressure them to embrace its ideology in the first place. HRC can play the victim all it wants, but it started this corporate culture war, and Starbuck is only encouraging companies to return to neutral.