Op-Ed Columnist |
| Virginia Foxx, a member of Congress from North Carolina, has a long record of opposing gay rights. She has gone so far as to claim that Matthew Shepard — a college student murdered in a hate crime — was not killed because he was gay. At one point, she used the word “hoax.” |
| Nonetheless, the executives of Comcast, the media company, have decided that Foxx deserves the company’s support: It recently donated money to Foxx’s political action committee. |
| Doug Collins, a House member from Georgia, is also an opponent of gay rights. He has argued, bizarrely, that a ban on workplace discrimination would somehow hurt “women, lesbians, and families.” Still, Home Depot has decided to support Collins financially. |
| Senator Marsha Blackburn, from Tennessee, opposes marriage equality and supports President Trump’s efforts to keep transgender Americans out of the military. AT&T recently gave her thousands of dollars. |
| This list could go on. FedEx, General Electric, Pfizer, UBS, UPS and Verizon have all given significant financial backing to members of Congress who oppose L.G.B.T. rights. |
| Yet every one of these companies also claims to support L.G.B.T. equality. Their social media accounts post photographs of rainbow flags during Pride Month, and their corporate websites brag about their policies toward L.G.B.T. employees. |
| This hypocrisy was the subject of a recent newsletter by the journalist Judd Legum, who’s been doing excellent reporting on corporate political activity. The specifics here come from his work. Legum focused on companies that have inclusive benefits for their L.G.B.T. employees but then support politicians who undermine those same employees. |
| This issue fits a larger pattern. Many big corporations promote an image of decency. They claim to value all of their employees and customers. They claim to care about the state of American democracy and the quality of our schools. But when these same corporations are faced with hard political choices — like whether to bankroll politicians who oppose equality, or whether to damage city budgets by using shady tax loopholes — their principles suddenly take a back seat. |
| I understand why big companies might prefer to avoid tough issues and simply spread around their campaign donations to maximize their influence. I don’t see any problem with these corporations giving money to politicians on both sides of the abortion debate, for example, because the companies don’t claim to be “pro-life” or “pro-choice.” But they do claim to have a position on L.G.B.T. equality. They say that it’s part of their corporate values, yet they support politicians who treat L.G.B.T. Americans as second-class citizens. |
| Imagine if AT&T, Pfizer, UBS and the other companies mentioned here took a different stance. Imagine if they said they were willing to back politicians of either party who took diverging positions on any number of issues, so long as those politicians didn’t violate any of the companies’ core values. That approach could actually make a difference, because members of Congress rely on financial support from corporate America. |
| Instead, the companies are putting profit and influence over their own employees — which suggests that their stated corporate values aren’t very meaningful. |
| “We stand in support of the L.G.B.T.Q. community members every day,” Corey Anthony, AT&T’s chief diversity officer, recently said. “As an ally, our support is long standing and unwavering.” |
| Unwavering, eh? |
