Anheuser-Busch is being urged, in light of conservative pushback to the company’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, to publicly reaffirm its support for the transgender community.
“In this moment, it is absolutely critical for Anheuser-Busch to stand in solidarity with Dylan and the trans community,” reads a letter obtained by The Hill sent to Anheuser-Busch’s head of human resources by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. https://t.co/8ZsaQn1xtP
— The Hill (@thehill) April 29, 2023
A letter, acquired by The Hill, was sent this week to Anheuser-Busch’s head of human resources by Jay Brown, a senior vice president at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
“In this moment, it is absolutely critical for Anheuser-Busch to stand in solidarity with Dylan and the trans community,” the Wednesday letter read.
“However, when faced with anti-LGBTQ+ and transphobic criticism, Anheuser-Busch’s actions demonstrate a profound lack of fortitude in upholding its values of diversity, equity, and inclusion to employees, customers, shareholders and the LGBTQ+ community,” the letter continued.
The HRC took issue with a statement released by Anheuser-Busch on April 14 entitled “Our Responsibility to America.”
In part, that statement read, “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
The company’s decision to commemorate Mulvaney’s one-year anniversary of his “Days of Girlhood” TikTok series with a beer can with Mulvaney’s face on it started a firestorm for the company.
According to Fox Business, Anheuser-Busch lost more than $5 billion in value the week following Mulvaney’s partnership, and Yahoo Finance reported last week that Bud Light sales dipped an astonishing 17 percent since Mulvaney made the announcement.
The company is now in the unenviable situation of trying to keep its market share while trying not to offend the LGBT community and the HRC in particular.
The HRC is the largest and one of the most powerful LGBT rights advocates in the nation. More importantly than that, the HRC oversees the “Corporate Equality Index.”
According to the New York Post, the HRC uses its Corporate Equality Index (CEI) to issue report cards for America’s biggest corporations awarding or subtracting points for how well companies adhere to what HRC calls its rating criteria.
The rating criteria consists of five major categories as follows: “Workforce Protections,” “Inclusive Benefits,” “Supporting an Inclusive Culture,” “Corporate Social Responsibility and Responsible Citizenship.”
In 2022, according to the HRC website, Anheuser-Busch was one of 842 companies to receive a perfect rating as a company with a strong commitment to equality. Now, in 2023, that commitment is being called into question-based on the handling of one situation.
The HRC, according to the letter, is preparing to lower Anheuser-Busch’s longstanding 100 percent CEI score unless the company agrees to meet with HRC leadership and release a statement reaffirming its support of the LGBT community.
So far Anheuser-Busch has declined to meet the HRC’s requests as the company tries to stop the drop in sales that it has experienced over the past few weeks.
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