There is much to criticize about Ford Motor Co. and readers of this blog have a pretty good idea just how much. Still, I’m always happy to give Ford its due. When it comes to promoting gay rights and taking unpopular and controversial positions even when it put the automaker’s business at risk, Ford has a storied history, possibly unrivaled in corporate America.
I outlined in considerable detail Ford’s formidable Gay Pride history in this commentary I posted last year, explaining why the “very gay” badass Raptor pickup the automaker was promoting in Europe wasn’t woke pandering but rather consistent with the company’s longstanding support and marketing to gay communities. While promoting gay causes is now considered good business, Ford was doing it when it wasn’t.
In 2006, American Family Association and more than 30 other conservative groups launched a one-year boycott urging Christians not to buy Ford vehicles and its various brands. The groups pointed to Ford’s financial support of organizations such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, its sponsorship of “Gay Pride” events, and its advertising in gay magazines and other media.
“We have researched the automakers, and Ford is head and shoulders above the others in their financial support and contributions,” Randy Sharp, then AFA’s direct of special projects, told Baptist Press. “While it is true that others do [support gay causes], they don’t do it to the extent that the Ford Motor Company does. We looked at all the automakers and other companies, and it was quite clear to us that Ford was the top offender of family values.”
Sharp credited the conservative groups’ boycott for the 7.9% decline in Ford’s 2006 sales, a year when the company posted a whopping $12.7 billion loss.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a prominent and much feared LGBTQ+ rights group with deep ties to the Democratic party and the Obama and Biden administrations, last week smeared Ford for CEO Jim Farley’s disclosure in an employee memo to withdraw its participation in the HRC’s equality index and the automaker’s refusal to institute diversity quotas. Despite Ford’s longstanding financial support for HRC — in 2003 when Ford owned Volvo it donated $500 to HRC for every Volvo sold — and being recognized in HRC’s latest survey among America’s corporate leaders in “LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion,” HRC president Kelley Robinson trashed the automaker with vitriol and unfounded claims that did Donald Trump proud.
“Today, Ford Motor Company abandoned its commitment to hundreds of thousands of employees by cowering to internet troll Robby Starbuck and signaling that inclusion and other core values are no longer a priority in the workplace,” Robinson thundered. “Ford cowered to MAGA bully and Republican-reject Robby Starbuck. Robby Starbuck is so extreme that the Tennessee Republican Party sought to distance itself from him. Starbuck’s only business experience is hawking vitamins marketed by people profiting off of COVID disinformation.”
Robinson warned that Ford’s “shortsighted decisions will have long-term consequences. Hastily abandoning efforts that ensure fair, safe, and inclusive work environments is bad for business and leaves Ford’s employees and millions of LGBTQ+-allied consumers behind. With nearly 30% of Gen Z identifying as LGBTQ+ and the community wielding $1.4 trillion in spending power, retreating from these principles undermines both consumer trust and employee success.”
Given Ford’s history, it’s a giant leap to conclude the automaker’s decision to stop working with HRC signals an abandonment of its decades-long support for LGBTQ+ causes. Robby Starbuck is a former Hollywood music video director turned activist who claims responsibility for other companies, including Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply Co., John Deere, Brown-Forman, and Lowe’s, for abandoning their DEI programs. Robinson showed poor judgment publicly crediting Starbuck’s influence for Ford’s decision, which is possibly without justification.
According to CNN, Starbuck targets companies whose DEI programs were only implemented in recent years because they may be less likely to resist pressure. Ford doesn’t remotely meet that criterion. A very plausible explanation for Ford’s decision is the one an unnamed spokesman gave to the Wall Street Journal: The company decided to stop aiding all surveys that rank workplaces, including for veterans, people with disabilities and other groups, because of the time and effort required.
HRC is top of mind for me these days because the organization figures prominently in Charlie Gasparino’s Go Woke Go Broke, which I’m in the midst of reading. The book is about how corporate America became so radicalized and HRC warranted some prominent mentions, albeit unfavorable ones. For all of Robby Starbuck’s supposed influence, he didn’t merit even a mention in Gasparino’s book.
According to Gasparino, Robinson is “tight” with Barak Obama and helped run his 2008 campaign. Robinson spoke at the DNC’s convention last month. Gasparino says CEOs live in fear of HRC and its diversity rankings, which can impact their compensations.
“The Obama regulatory regime may have been among the most progressively aggressive until (Joe) Biden was elected president,” Gasparino says. “Corporate America’s way of fighting back against forces like these is to cozy up to them and their proxies with money. It’s called buying protection. No wonder HRC’s list of donors, or so-called corporate partners, includes Disney, UPS, Pfizer, Amazon, Google, and JP Morgan, a veritable who’s who of corporate America looking to tout wokeness because of the political environment.”
Tyler O’Neil, managing editor of The Daily Signal, likened HRC’s tactics to the mafia.
(Full Disclosure: Gasparino in his book references this Starkman Approved post, How Pepsi Woke Washes Its Evil Business, a mention I’m proud of.)
For all its lofty talk about diversity and inclusion, HRC doesn’t strike me as a place where Log Cabin Republicans, which advocates for equal rights for LGBTQ+ Americans and also bills itself as a human rights group, would be made to feel welcome. Among HRC’s avowed missions is to ensure the election of Kamala Harris.
Rest assured, if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz get elected, HRC’s White House pipeline will remain intact, empowering the organization to continue bullying major U.S. corporations. The Advocate, which caters to LGBTQ+ communities, reported that Walz will deliver the keynote address this Saturday at HRC’s annual dinner in Washington, which it characterized as “one of the nation’s capital’s most anticipated events.”
According to The Advocate, Joe and Jill Biden both spoke at HRC’s 2023 annual dinner. Harris addressed the group in 2022.
While Democrats claim they are guardians of America’s democracy and warn that Donald Trump is a threat, HRC is an example of how Democrats impose their agendas in ways Americans don’t understand, and the corporate media won’t highlight.
“Organizations like HRC figured out, here’s a way we can essentially embed discrimination protections within companies all across America without getting a law passed,” David Glasgow, who runs a diversity research center at New York University’s law school, told the Wall Street Journal. “That’s the real power of these indexes: They can create large-scale social and workplace changes without having to go through a dysfunctional congressional process.”
That’s what makes Ford’s decision to stop supporting HRC’s diversity index so daring and monumental. If the U.S. company that’s led the way on gay rights can’t justify the time and resources required to support HRC’s index, that provides considerable cover for other companies to follow suit. It will be interesting to see if GM follows Ford’s example, given that the company just fired 1,000 salaried software and services workers supposedly for budgetary reasons and like Ford is struggling to implement its EV transition.
In 2000, GM joined Ford and Chrysler in a watershed announcement the automakers would offer full health benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of their then nearly 500,000 U.S. employees. The move was hailed by gay rights activists as a potential tipping point in persuading other “old economy” employers to do the same. One would be hard pressed to find a better and more experienced corporate champion of gay rights than Arden Hoffman, GM’s chief people officer.
Hoffman’s bona fides include heading the Wharton gay and lesbian student group when she attended business school there, co-chairing the gay and lesbian network of employees when she worked at Goldman Sachs, and stints at Google, Dropbox, and GM’s troubled Cruise driverless taxi business. In this 2008 interview with The Glass Hammer, Hoffman shared her experiences and cited HRC’s ratings as a credible external measure.
The corporate media routinely cites HRC and other like-minded activist organizations, giving them their aura of credibility and the patina that they are altruistic nonprofits doing God’s work. The finances and spending of these nonprofits rarely get much scrutiny, and in the rare instances when reporters poked around, the results weren’t pretty.
The New York Times recently reported that Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of the nonprofit organization GLAAD, one of the country’s leading LGBTQ advocacy groups, lives high on the hog, traveling first class, staying in 5-star hotels and utilizing expensive car services. Other paid benefits included a Cape Cod summer rental and a nearly $20,000 home office remodel, which included a chandelier, among other accoutrements.
Ellis’s annual pay package, potentially can reach into the high six or low seven figures — a sum the Times said would “far exceed” what leaders at many similarly sized nonprofits have earned.
Leaders of Black Lives Matter also are reportedly enjoying the good life, which included the purchase of a nearly $6 million sprawling, 6,500-square-foot Los Angeles area compound with seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a sound stage, a music studio, pool, and parking for more than 20 cars. Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the controversial 1619 Project which argued that America was founded on racist exploitation, charged a local northern Virginia public library $33,350 to give a one hour talk for Black History Month. The fee reportedly included a first-class plane ticket.