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Goldman Sachs and Bank of America funding anti-LGBTIQ groups [1]
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Date: 2023-07
The 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.
openDemocracy also uncovered donations by the Shell Oil Company Foundation and the Motorola Solutions Foundation, as well as charitable foundations of the US Chamber of Commerce, and Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America lobby groups.
Between them, the six organisations donated $1.3m to anti-rights groups over three years, according to the publicly available financial filings in the US, where they are registered as nonprofits and must disclose some information about their income and spending.
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RaShawn Hawkins from the Human Rights Campaign urged the companies to remove funding for anti-LGBTIQ groups, and “reckon with how damaging and harmful those donations are to the community, including their own LGBTQ+ employees”.
“The LGBTQ+ community, particularly trans and non-binary people, are experiencing a relentless wave of attacks and vitriol from far-right extremists,” she told openDemocracy.
“Employees who see their company giving to hate groups and extremist politicians want their employers to be held accountable. We do too.”
Funding hate
Between 2017 and 2020, two charitable foundations of Goldman Sachs – the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund and Charitable Gift Fund – donated $286,300 to six ultraconservative groups. This includes a $10,000 grant in 2019 to Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal group that has intervened in dozens of US court cases challenging same-sex marriage and adoption laws and others backing doctors and businesses that refuse to offer services to LGBTIQ people.
The group has also worked to restrict the rights of trans people – advising US public schools to ban trans pupils from accessing facilities in line with their gender identity; and bringing legal action against school districts for having trans-inclusive policies.
In 2020, openDemocracy revealed ADF’s US branch has spent more than $21m opposing women’s and LGBTIQ rights around the world since 2008, including more than $20m in Europe. Its UK arm has challenged protest-free “buffer zones” around abortion clinics, and supported calls for ‘freedom of conscience’ provisions to allow medical staff to independently refuse to provide legal abortion care.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) civil rights group has described ADF as an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” and “one of the most influential groups informing the [former Trump] administration’s attack on LGBTQ rights”.
Groups are listed as “hate groups” by the SPLC if they “depict LGBTQ people in dehumanising ways or explicitly target them with discrimination”.
Over three years, Goldman Sachs’ charitable funds also donated:
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/goldman-sachs-bank-of-america-anti-lgbtiq-groups-anti-abortion-rights/
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