Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have both been lauded for their LGBTIQ-friendly workplaces. But tax filings uncovered by openDemocracy show nonprofit foundations linked to the banks have also funded ultraconservative groups fighting to roll back civil rights for the queer community worldwide.
From 2017 to 2020, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation handed out more than $390,000 to eight such organisations who between them have resisted same-sex marriage laws and anti-discrimination protections for LGBTIQ people, challenged contraception and abortion access, and sought to ban gender-affirming healthcare for trans people. …
In the end it’s certainly because at least some of the executives making donation decisions are bigots, but here’s my attempt to come up with an explanation for why the corporation as a whole would view these donations as strategic:
They perceive that electing Republicans is beneficial for their business, and the Republican party uses bigotry to motivate their base. Hate against queer people is the R’s cause du jour. Funding hate groups means those groups produce more bigot propaganda, which makes the Republican electoral strategy more effective, which makes it more likely that Republican candidates will be elected who are perceived to be more amenable to deregulation that would allow banks to increase profits at everyone else’s expense.
So from this perspective, banks see queer people as a group they can extract value from, both through rainbow washing initiatives to attract them as customers and talent and (as seen here) as a target they can attack in pursuit of political power, which is equivalent to profit.
That makes a surprising amount of sense, thanks