Human Rights Campaign: Largest LGBT Donors Are Drone Manufacturers

[Gravitycollapse]

http://www.policymic.com/articles/39043/human-rights-campaign-largest-lgbt-donors-are-drone-manufacturers

Steven W. Thrasher, who has been nationally recognized for his LGBT journalism, called out national LGBT nonprofits and advocates, colloquially referred to by some as the glitter industrial complex, in a Gawker article, contending that the LGBT activists and nonprofits “have been bought, paid-for and sold to the highest bidder.”

It’s true: corporate America runs the LGBT movement, or at least the part of the LGBT movement that gets press time and donors. Their sponsorship keeps the LGBT movement from addressing the issues that matter most for the LGBT community and beyond.

Thrasher highlights that many of the biggest donors to the Human Rights Campaign, the multi-million dollar nonprofit that receives the bulk of donations for LGBT issues, are drone manufacturers. These donors profit off of the United States’ use of drones to kill civilians, including children, with little oversight or accountability. Drone manufacturers are far from the only ethically dark gray to black donors to LGBT advocacy organizations: a brief perusal of any major LGBT organization’s list of donors reveals that corporate black hats like Bank of America, BP, Coke, and Nike all provide major cash to LGBT nonprofits.

[cprise]

1. Saw this coming 15 years ago

Its going to get bumpy, folks.

The old LGBT guard was decidedly non-corporate. But that changed in the 90s (and what didn't).

[theHandpuppet]

2. Thank you for posting this.

I have absolutely no problem calling out LGBT advocacies whose business is blood money.

[theHandpuppet]

3. Would you mind posting this in LGBT also?

We definitely need to have a discussion about this.

Thanks!

[theHandpuppet]

7. I've provided a link in the GLBT forum

Hope you don't mind my taking that initiative.

[blkmusclmachine]

4. Bad

[alarimer]

5. Yes a lot of the largest non-profits probably have many corporate ties.

Having lots of money or being able to raise lots of money doesn't mean that they are doing the most good. It means they are the most visible.

I wonder how much of the donations comes from corporate annual giving? You know that campaign that most companies and government agencies engage in once a year, where they try to get their employees to donate, usually through the United Way (which is a horror story in an of itself) with charitable contributions deducted from your check. It's not supposed to be compulsory, but it often really is. Most of the charities on that list are fairly safe, not the most radical.

But still, you'd think groups like this would police their donors lists a little more closely.

[El_Johns]

6. Interesting, but I'd say that's the case for 99% of non-profits/charities/good causes that get media

attention.

Everyone is bought and that's the problem. Organizational and personal power derives from the degree to which you are bought, and most chose power.

[theHandpuppet]

13. That's pretty depressing

That said, I prefer to have as much information as possible about how any charity is funded when making decisions about donating. If the HRC is heavily funded by the war machine, I just can't donate. It's a personal decision. There are many worthy LGBT charities operating out there that need support.

[DURHAM D]

8. Can someone post proof of this?

Their sponsorship keeps the LGBT movement from addressing the issues that matter most for the LGBT community and beyond.

If not I am all for taking money for the cause from any asshole.

[JI7]

9. there are many businesses including large corporations that give to liberal causes

[Gravitycollapse]

11. Most often for less than noble reasons.

The primary concern of large corporations is to increase profit, not help anyone outside of the company.

[ProSense]

10. The Gawker piece is interesting:

<...>

A regular homosexual can give Dan Savage handjob after handjob for his anti-bully “It Gets Better” campaign if he wants, and he can even scream from the rafters that Savage should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for saying that something must be done to protect the powerless who are bullied by the powerful. But that same homosexual becomes as beholden to the military-industrial complex as the Professional Homosexual when he fails to call out SF Pride as a bully. The powerful group found perhaps the most marginalized, powerless homosexual in the nation, pulled him into the spotlight for a few hours, took a giant shit on him, roughed him up a little, called him names, and then kicked him back into the gutter.

The entire LGBT community— not just the Professional Homosexual class—is to blame for the militarization of the movement, when it exalts breaking the law to preserve the status quo and denounce it as traitorous when it challenges the status quo. Imagine, for a minute, that you are the Military-Industrial Complex. You’d be very happy that a bunch of homosexuals at SF Pride named as the 2009 Grand Marshal Lt. Dan Choi, who broke the law repeatedly while trying to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In honoring Lt. Choi, the homosexuals at SF Pride were furthering the status quo in militarizing a larger percentage of the American population.

Now imagine how happy you’d be that the very same homosexuals denounced their own choice of Private Manning as Grand Marshal because—wait for it—he broke the law! (Alas, he did so to ends that made people question, not expand, the concept of American militarization.) Then marvel as the same fairies go to the parade and pass out flyers from Pride corporate sponsors like AT&T and Verizon, who cooperated with illegal eavesdropping...are LGBT "political activists" (these people exist, I have interacted with them) who will complain about drone warfare, never even question Obama about it, and completely ignore facts like, oh, two of the top three drone manufacturers lobbying Washington right now are HRC corporate donors.

The shameful treatment of Private Manning is an embarrassment for President Obama, as it should be, and the gay establishment just helped him to sweep it under the rug. Yes, Obama has perhaps done as much for gay legal rights as LBJ did for racial legal rights. But Martin Luther King took LBJ's support for the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, then turned around and excoriated him in his final years about the Vietnam War. He was not liked for this at the time, but history (aided by Daniel Ellsberg’s leaks) proved him right.

- more -

http://gawker.com/haaay-to-the-chief-the-military-industrial-complex-con-486133694

I assume the point is that groups like HRC should emulate MLK. The war for MLK was part of the racial injustice. Outside of the individual situation of Chelsea Manning, I'm not sure I understand what drone warfare has to do with LGBT rights? Why would it make sense for these groups to shift focus to drone warfare, especially given the battles they're still fighting for equality?

[iandhr]

12. 8 states legalized marriage equality last year.

Some of the places where drones go being gay is a crime punishable by death.

I can't fathom why gay rights organizations would have trouble taking drone manufactures donations.


And while we are on the subject of "corporate black hats" Shouldn't we encourage business to take anti discrimination stances.