Thanks to the Human Rights Campaign, even conservatives may be helping fund child-mutilating hormones and surgery, mother-and-father loss, and the destruction of embryonic life—not through elections or legislation, but through burrito bowls, chocolate bars, and bronzer.
That is the scandal exposed by a new report from Them Before Us, Harming Rights of Children: How the HRC’s Corporate Equality Index Violates Children’s Rights. For years, Americans have treated the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI) as a harmless benchmark for workplace fairness. It is not. It is a corporate pressure system that rewards companies for adopting child-harming policies and punishes those that resist.
A perfect score is not an empty symbol. It has a price, and children pay it.
At least 70 of the CEI’s 100 points reward practices that directly implicate children’s bodies, identities, or family bonds. Companies earn points for “transgender-inclusive” health coverage; for “family formation benefits” that subsidize IVF, surrogacy, and sperm or egg donation; and for “corporate social responsibility” initiatives that fund organizations like the Trevor Project and Point of Pride, both of which promote the medicalization of minors.
Child harm is built into the scorecard.
Start with the 10 points for family formation benefits. That means corporate-funded surrogacy, donor conception, and IVF. These arrangements impose losses on children from the beginning.
Only 2.3% of IVF embryos survive to live birth. Donor-conceived people report deep identity wounds: 85% say learning the truth about their conception changed who they thought they were, and 48% say seeing friends with their biological parents makes them feel sad. Unlike adoption—which seeks to mend maternal wounds—surrogacy inflicts them intentionally by separating a newborn from the only voice, scent, and body he has known.
Then there are the 25 points for “transgender-inclusive” health benefits. The CEI does not specify an age floor, meaning companies may cover puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for dependents, including minors. These interventions carry risks of infertility, cancer, and irreversible physical harm. The 2024 Cass Review found that 30% of transitions ceased within four years and that detransition cases are “no longer negligible.” Yet under the CEI, this is worth a quarter of a perfect score.
The index goes further. Under corporate social responsibility, companies earn 15 points for philanthropy and legislative support. That includes funding organizations like the Trevor Project, which received $29 million from corporate partners in 2023, and Point of Pride, which funds chest binders and transition surgeries. The briefing cites an undercover investigation in which the Trevor Project encouraged a caller posing as a teenage girl to leave her home and move in with an adult male who supported her “transition.”
The CEI also imposes a 25-point penalty for any company with a “public anti-LGBTQ+ blemish.” In practice, companies that support child protective legislation such as parental rights protections or restrictions on the medicalization of minors risk punishment.
The Corporate Equality Index is not a barometer of adult civil rights. It is an indicator that a company has violated children’s natural rights.
A perfect CEI score means Starbucks, Amazon, and Microsoft are complicit in child harm. Same with Hershey’s, Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Chipotle, UPS, Truist, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Wendy’s. All household names built on family trust that now fund policies that fracture families and medicalize children.
Consumers should be angry.
Every time you buy a KitKat, order a Chicken al Pastor burrito bowl, or trust one of these companies with your paycheck or mortgage, you help fund policies that disregard human life at its earliest stages, separate children from their mothers and fathers, and put minors on a path toward sterilization and lifelong medical dependence.
Conservatives rightly denounce government policies that harm children. But we have given a pass to corporate America for inflicting those same harms.
The good news is that the system is starting to crack. Fortune 500 participation in the CEI collapsed 65% between 2025 and 2026, dropping from 377 companies to 131. Twenty companies representing more than five million employees formally withdrew. Tractor Supply led the way. Walmart and John Deere followed. But leaving the scorecard is not the same as protecting children.
That is why public pressure matters now more than ever.
If we want to protect children and retake the family, it cannot be only a court or culture fight. It must include confronting corporate America’s role in normalizing and funding child harm. We must pressure companies to stop chasing points and start protecting children. And we must refuse to reward brands that threaten children’s right to life, their right to a mother and father, and their right to intact, unmedicalized bodies.
Children are greater than points. That is the standard. It is time to make corporate America live by it.
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