# Human Rights Campaign Founded in **1980 as the Human Rights Campaign Fund** by activist Steve Endean as the **first national gay-rights political action committee** in the United States. HRC is now the **largest LGBTQ political lobbying and electoral organization in the country**, with a roughly $50M annual budget, a 501(c)(4) advocacy arm, an affiliated political action committee, and an affiliated foundation. ## Core Functions - **Lobbying** — federal legislation and executive-branch advocacy, including the (still-pending) Equality Act, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and decades of HIV/AIDS funding work - **Electoral endorsements and political spending** — HRC endorsements are a sought-after credential in Democratic primaries - **The Corporate Equality Index** (since 2002) — annual ratings of Fortune 500 companies on LGBTQ workplace policies; one of the most influential corporate-accountability tools in U.S. business, and a frequent target of the 2024–2026 anti-DEI right-wing backlash - **Municipal Equality Index** — rating cities on LGBTQ-inclusive policies ## Strategic Position and Critiques HRC sits at the **respectability-and-electoralism pole** of the modern LGBTQ organizational ecosystem — the political descendant of [[Mattachine Society]] / [[Daughters of Bilitis]]–style assimilationist organizing rather than of [[Gay Liberation Front]] / [[ACT UP]] direct-action traditions. Critiques from the movement's left include: - Marriage-equality-first strategy through the 2000s that critics argued underweighted transgender rights, racial-justice questions, and economic precarity - Corporate-pinkwashing partnerships that some activists see as too generous to companies with otherwise harmful records - Centrist Democratic alignment that produces strong access during Democratic administrations and limited leverage during Republican ones HRC remains, however, the LGBTQ movement's primary interface with the U.S. legislative and electoral systems — the organization most likely to be in the room for federal LGBTQ-rights negotiations. ## Trump 2.0 Posture In January 2025, HRC declared a **"national state of emergency"** for LGBTQ Americans in response to the incoming administration's anti-trans executive orders and [[Project 2025]] implementation. The organization is now operating as a defensive coordinator for state-level pushback against federal rollbacks. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Resistance Hub]]