Human Rights Campaign drops weapons manufacturers as corporate sponsors

The Human Rights Campaign cut its financial ties to weapons manufacturers Northrop Grumman and RTX after a two-year-long organizing effort by LGBTQ2S+ activists.

Up until last year, HRC listed Northrop Grumman as a “Platinum Partner,” the organization’s highest tier of corporate sponsorship. Northrop Grumman supplies the Israeli military with missile systems, fighter jets and other weapons while defence contractor RTX supplies the military with bombs, missiles and other weapons systems, according to watchdog site Investigate.

HRC is one of the largest and most prominent LGBTQ2S+ advocacy groups in the U.S. But organizers from groups like No Pride in Genocide have accused HRC of using the gay rights movement to obscure Israel’s human rights violations in Gaza, referring to it as “pinkwashing.”

U.S.-based grassroots organizing groups Gender Liberation Movement and Adalah Justice Project said HRC divesting from the two weapons suppliers was a result of “unrelenting organizing happening within LGBTQ2S+ communities” including No Pride in Genocide, ACT UP New York and Writers Against the War on Gaza. 

While HRC has now cut ties with Northrop Grumman and RTX, the organization stopped short of some of the organizers’ demands: including committing to divest “permanently” from any weapons manufacturers and publicly calling for an arms embargo on Israel.

An HRC spokesperson told The Intercept that the organization has “spoken out about the crisis … and how Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ2S+ hatred are globally linked.”