Corporations drop from transgender youth program partners page after State Farm exit
More than 200 corporations — and five government entities — are indirectly tied to GenderCool Project through their partnerships with LGBTQ workplace group.
Less than a day after State Farm ended its partnership with a nonprofit that promotes "positive stories about transgender and non-binary kiddos," several more corporations and a federal agency disappeared from the nonprofit's partner page as well.
It wasn't a mass exodus, the GenderCool Project told Just the News: It was an opportunity for spring cleaning after the insurance company's hasty exit.
State Farm found itself in damage control mode after the watchdog Consumers' Research on Monday published a Jan. 18 email from Corporate Responsibility Analyst Jose Soto to the insurance company's Florida agents.
Soto, who handles Florida and Hispanic relationships, asked for volunteers to join 550 agents and employees nationwide to distribute GenderCool's books on transgender and nonbinary identity, intended for children five and older, to "their local teacher, community center or library." They would then "highlight our commitment to diversity" on social media.
The company backtracked Tuesday after critics noted the plan could violate Florida's Parental Rights in Education law, known derisively as "Don't Say Gay," by giving schools instructional materials on gender identity for K-3 students.
"We support organizations that provide resources for parents to have conversations about gender and identity with their children at home" but not "required curriculum in schools on this topic," State Farm said, dropping its affiliation with the GenderCool Project.
By Wednesday afternoon, nine of the remaining 22 entities on the partner page Tuesday night were gone: Capital One, NBC Universal, General Mills, Adobe, Indeed, Bank of America, Sprout Social, Oracle and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the last of which disappeared within hours of Just the News asking for an explanation of its partnership.
Most were still indirectly tied to the project by their partnership with an LGBTQ workplace nonprofit that has long partnered with GenderCool. Out and Equal Workplace Advocates counts more than 200 corporations as partners, including State Farm.
Five government entities — USDA, FDA, NSA, State Department and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago — are also listed as partners with Out and Equal. Four didn't respond to queries, and one declined to talk on the record.
John Grosshandler, founder and chairman of GenderCool, said State Farm was the only partner to leave this year and the first to leave in this way.
"No one has reached out to us privately indicating they plan to" exit, he wrote in an email. "Importantly, none of the other corporate partners have bought books to be voluntarily distributed to libraries."
GenderCool decided Wednesday to update the pages that listed its partners from the past four years to make them current, he said.
https://justthenews.com/accountability/watchdogs/transgender-youth-program-explains-why-corporate-partners-disappeared