Ford, Coors Light and Other Brands Retreat From a Gay-Rights Index – WSJ:
When Ford F -1.14%decrease; red down pointing triangle scaled back its diversity initiatives it called out one organization by name: the Human Rights Campaign.
The automaker last week told employees it would stop providing workplace data to the gay-rights lobbying group, which spent decades persuading big companies to embrace policies hospitable to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees and customers.
Other companies dialing down diversity initiatives this summer also said they would distance themselves from HRC: Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, rural retailer Tractor Supply, and distiller Brown-Forman, which makes Jack Daniel’s. On Tuesday, Molson Coors also said it would stop working with the group.
The companies didn’t elaborate on why they highlighted HRC in their announcements. Nearly all of them had ranked well on an index that HRC uses to score companies by their LGBTQ-friendly policies. Some of the companies said they would stop sharing data with HRC after they had been targeted by social-media activist Robby Starbuck.
It is well past time for companies to get out of politics, do what they do, and allow consumers to judge their goods or services on their own merits rather than what politics they happen to favor. HRC, which was wildly successful in achieving gay rights equality in the United States, then glommed on to trans-rights, an area that is not nearly so cut-and-dried. Companies have, I think, realized that there is no benefit to submitted themselves to HRC’s judgment, and as the Bud Light debacle last year showed, some huge potential downside.