Biblically responsible investing is a key factor driving American companies away from their DEI efforts.

WORDS TOM SAYERS AND SPENCER MACNAUGHTON

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION.

On 7 January, Meta introduced a new and watered-down Hateful Conduct Policy, which now makes explicit exemptions for discrimination aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community. “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality,” the policy states, using an offensive, loaded term that anti-trans activists frequently use. The LGBTQIA+ community and allies were outraged, with many boycotting Facebook and Instagram because of it.

But for Robert Netzly’s company, the new guidelines were a massive win: “Meta’s decision to end its censorship and divisive DEI policies represents a watershed moment for free expression, corporate responsibility, and faith-based investing,” wrote Netzly, the CEO of Inspire Investing, in a blog post a few days after the announcement.

“We had been engaged with Meta for about eight months … with a shareholder resolution centred on censorship,” Netzly, who describes himself as a “blood-bought believer by Jesus Christ,” told Uncloseted Media. “I applaud [Meta] for listening. I applaud them for engaging with us and I applaud them for making a good decision,” he says, adding in his blog post that Inspire’s shareholder engagement efforts “were instrumental in speaking biblical truth to corporate power and contributed to steering Meta toward a more inclusive, free and God-glorifying society.” Meta did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request to view the shareholder resolution, and Inspire Investing declined to share a copy.

Inspire Investing, founded by Netzly in 2015, is one of several financial firms specialising in what’s known as biblically responsible investing (BRI) – a rapidly growing, socially conservative form of Christian faith-based investing that steers Christians, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, away from investing in companies that support or promote various LGBTQIA+ rights or inclusive policies for the community.

“The whole idea of biblically responsible investing is a relatively new concept that doesn’t get a lot of attention,” says Kent Saunders, a professor of economics and finance at Anderson University.

While BRI may be new, this form of investing is a key factor pushing companies to sprint away from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

And the industry is booming. Netzly says his company has over $3.2 billion of assets under management, up from the $35 million they had eight years ago. “We’re growing like a weed. And not just us, but many others. So it really is just the beginning of the faith-based investment movement.”

How Biblically Responsible Investing Works

Inspire Investing and other BRI firms, like the Biblically Responsible Investing Institute (BRII) and the Timothy Plan, screen companies for various forms of support for the LGBTQIA+ community. Depending on the BRI firm, companies can get dinged for celebrating Pride Month, for offering benefits to same-sex couples, for having an LGBTQIA+ employee resource group and for covering top or bottom surgery for their trans employees.

“When you’re talking about a company that is comprised of thousands of people with various viewpoints, we can’t take sides in a social issue,” says Netzly. “Particularly in something so deeply important and impactful as marriage, sexuality, relationships [and] gender.”

Despite Meta’s new rules, even they aren’t BRI-safe. Among other violations, BRII downranked them because of a 2024 video posted to LinkedIn captioned, “This PRIDE month, we’re proud to amplify the voices and stories of our Meta employees who are shaping a more inclusive world.” And Meta isn’t alone: Amazon was down ranked for having an LGBTQ category on its marketplace. In fact, almost half of the S&P 500 is a no-go for Christian investors because of their so-called LGBTQIA+ activism.

“What they’re doing is demonising an entire community,” says Wendy Via, co-founder and president of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “[BRI] creates this false equivalency for discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people and people of faith. It’s just not the same. The gay community has worked for years and years to get folks the rights and the protections that they have earned and deserve. And so a company shouldn’t be dinged for being inclusive.”

One of the most common reasons a company gets ruled out of BRI is when they have a high score on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index – a survey that measures workplaces on their LGBTQ policies and practices that is widely recognised as the gold standard metric for whether a company treats their queer employees well.

But for Inspire Investing, companies who scored “an above-average employer rating” on the HRC’s Index are dinged and receive a bad score for their so-called LGBT activism. Meta, Pfizer, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Microsoft, Amazon and Apple all received the lowest score from Inspire Investing – a negative 100 – for “earning an above-average rating from HRC.”

Part of corporate America’s abandonment of DEI has involved no longer participating in the HRC’s survey. In the last six months, companies that announced they would no longer participate include Harley-Davidson and Lowe’s. And today, both companies hold positive scores from Inspire Investing, which is only possible when a company has no screening violations related to so-called LGBT activism or other categories they deem anti-Christian.

“There’s many things in the [Index] that are just frankly required legal mandates; you have to do certain things,” says Netzly, who says HRC has “encouraged hate-filled messages towards people of faith.” But when it comes to something like celebrating Pride, Netzly asks, “Has Apple sponsored a Focus on the Family parade? I don’t think they would do that [and] that’s an example of taking sides in an issue.” Focus on the Family is an organization that has advocated for conversion therapy. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described them as one of a “dozen major groups [which] help drive the religious right’s anti-gay crusade.”

In an email to Uncloseted Media, HRC Spokesperson Jared Todd challenged Netzly’s notion that being pro-LGBTQIA+ means you are anti-Christian. “Two things are true: Diversity and inclusion efforts are not a zero-sum issue; and LGBTQ+ people of all backgrounds hold jobs that are housed in workplaces across the country. That’s why policies and practices based in DEI, alongside active participation in surveys like the Corporate Equality Index, are so vital to a company’s long-term success in achieving their business goals and ensuring top talent attraction and retention,” he writes.

Despite the recent DEI exodus, Todd noted that this year, HRC surveyed a record-high 1,449 participants – nearly 5% growth from the previous year. Todd also pointed to data from 2024 that found 60% of people say an inclusive work culture with a well-supported diversity program is critical to attracting and retaining them as an employee – up 9 points from 2022.

“I think the real problem is how these companies are defining Christianity and biblically-based thinking,” Via told Uncloseted Media. “They are viewing Christianity and a biblical worldview in a very narrow way that the majority of Christians do not agree with,” she says.

The Origins of BRI

“Biblically responsible investing was sort of an evolution from the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement,” says Saunders, who conducted a 2023 study exploring BRI. “This was a faith-based application of [it],” he says, adding that in recent years, BRI firms have separated themselves from ESG.

BRI was born in the 1990s when Arthur Ally founded the Timothy Plan. “At age 52, Mr. Ally was called by God … to launch America’s first pro-life/pro-family mutual fund,” reads a brochure on their website. When it launched, the firm screened for five core issues: abortion, pornography, alcohol, tobacco and casino gambling. It has since added additional screens aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community to “preserve innocence [by] filtering out companies engaged in anti-family activity” and exclude “companies actively profiting from and normalising the vulnerabilities of … sexual impurity, or attempting to redefine God’s Word.”

The Timothy Plan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

When it comes to filters, the Biblically Responsible Investing Institute’s are the strictest, according to Saunders’ research. Their sprawling screens – 67 in total – are broken down into 13 categories, including abortion, alcohol, anti-family activity, contraceptives and non-married lifestyles.

“We do not hate any person who self-identifies as LGBT,” Stephen duBarry, president of BRII, told Uncloseted Media in an email. “We are taught by Christ that every human being is our neighbour, who we are to love as much as we love ourselves. At the same time, we also believe that LGBT behaviour is sinful, disordered and ultimately self-destructive. We are convinced this is what the Bible teaches, and this is also how a broad consensus of Christians have understood scripture for roughly two millennia. It is precisely because we love our neighbor that we seek to divest from the promotion of all forms of behavior that we believe to be harmful.”

Saunders’ research found the most commonly violated BRII screen is related to LGBTQ equality which is filed under “anti-family activity” and “non-married lifestyles.” Each filter carries a fixed “failure period,” ranging from 1 year to 100 years, designating the length of time a company is excluded from BRI investing.

For example, because Apple celebrated pride in 2023 and 2024, they are excluded from BRI for 54 months until at least September 2026. Since they were “one of the first [companies] to offer domestic partner benefits (medical benefits to an employee’s same gender partner),” Apple is excluded for 100 years, lasting from March 17, 2008 until March 2108. Yes, as in the 22nd century.

DuBarry notes these exclusions could be dropped if Apple were to “meaningfully address BRII’s concerns.”

The full list of Apple’s BRII violations is vast. The company received anti-family activity violations for promoting LGBTQIA+ themed podcasts, audiobooks, and TV shows on iTunes and AppleTV. They received a similar violation because of a post on X promoting an interview with Scissor Sisters gay pop icon Jake Shears and non-binary musicians Lava La Rue and I. Jordan.

“[BRI] tries to point out companies that violate human rights … [but] excludes or prevents companies that are trying to be activists in that area,” says Saunders. “It certainly could seem to be doing the opposite of what it intends to do in some areas.”

The Growth of the Industry

Since the Timothy Plan launched in 1994, at least six other Christian investment firms have joined the scene. Some of these firms, including Inspire Investing, have their own network of specialised financial advisors who target Christian investors and guide them on how to follow BRI practices. The ability to grow clientele and audience is supported by a media ecosystem that includes TV ads, podcasts, videos, daily livestream shows and books that explain why you, a good Christian, should join in.

One podcast, Christian Financial Perspectives, explains in an episode entitled “Voting Christian, But Investing Woke?” that “millions of conservative Christians are supporting woke agendas through their mutual funds or ETFs.” Host Bob Barber explains that “we [conservative Christians] want to have a voice not only in the nation, but we want to have a voice in our city, our state, and how our country [is] run.” The goal? Enough control of the country to fight “liberals” who “want a free reign for the LGBTQIA+.”

“It’s kind of like the whole poop in the brownie stories,” says co-host Shawn Peters, resorting to a crude metaphor for why Christians can’t simply take any faith-based approach and must follow BRI. “If somebody offers you a brownie and they say, ‘Oh, there’s a little bit of poop in there.’ Well, how much poop is okay in the brownies for you to still eat them? I think most people would say, ‘Now that I know there’s poop in the brownies, I don’t want to eat them,’” he says, explaining that no matter how small or indirect, a good Christian steward wouldn’t let their money touch companies that support LGBTQIA+ or other screening measures in any way.

BRI Penetrates All-American Institutions

Companies with BRI violations transcend all institutions in American society. UnitedHealth Group is ruled out for offering health insurance that covers gender-affirming care for trans people; JP Morgan Chase took a hit for its foundation’s contribution to LGBTQIA+ causes like the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance and the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus; Starbucks was wrist slapped for sponsoring Seattle’s PrideFest in 2023; and even Electronic Arts – creator of The Sims – was dinged for including queer characters in its games.

Via sees parallels between the world of BRI in investing and the broader goals of right-wing Christianity. “The Christian nationalist movement in the US is very much trying to break that separation of church and state in our government and they are trying to influence entertainment and media. And now we’re looking at financial institutions. It is alarming that there is such a concentrated effort in all parts of society from a minority of a minority of Christianity,” she says.

Like most conservative Christian movements, the next biggest issue for BRI is abortion. Companies are ruled out of BRI for offering their employees benefits like insurance that covers abortion and abortion-related travel. For Target and Walmart – who have both recently ditched their DEI efforts – even simply selling the morning-after pill landed them a violation.

Real-World Impact

The world of BRI has a real-world impact on the policies of some of America’s largest companies.

Uncloseted Media has obtained four shareholder resolutions from Inspire Investing targeting efforts to curb hate speech and anti-discrimination guidelines dating as far back as 2023 – including one resolution that Apple shareholders rejected at their annual meeting on 25 February.

Uncloseted also obtained over 20 letters supporting similar resolutions submitted by Inspire Investing between March and May of last year to many companies that have since curbed their DEI policies, including Walmart, Amazon, Citibank, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase. “We’ve been in conversations with a number of [companies], you know? Tractor Supply, John Deere, kind of on down the list. Robby Starbuck is a part of our coalition,” says Netzly.

In a resolution submitted to Apple, Inspire Investing criticises the company’s policies, stating it supports “non-profits that are … actively attacking free speech and religious freedom.” This includes groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit specialising in civil rights and well-known for its hatewatch list that flags companies that “monitor and expose the activities of the American radical right.”

Another resolution submitted to Verizon says companies that promote DEI initiatives “replace rich cultural and ideological diversity with a monolithic focus on group identity” and that terms like “microaggressions” and “hate speech” serve to “punish certain political and religious views.”

Where they can’t wield their own shareholder power, Inspire Investing assists outside partners, like the conservative think tanks National Center for Public Policy Research and Bowyer Research, by sending letters of support for resolutions that target DEI policies and so-called viewpoint restriction rules that limit hate speech against marginalised groups.

In the week leading up to the presidential election, Inspire worked with SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQIA+ hate groups like Alliance Defending Freedom – which has voiced support for conversion therapy and has been influential in anti-trans legislation. The two organisations, alongside “a group of influential investors with over $65 billion in assets under management,” worked together to send letters to Fortune 1000 companies “urging them to avoid or roll back their DEI policies” in response to members of Congress who were asking those companies to “defend” DEI values.

Alliance Defending Freedom did not respond to Uncloseted Media’s request for comment.

“DEI has become synonymous with taking sides, and particularly a leftist side, alienating and even oppressing those who have different viewpoints,” Netzly told Uncloseted Media. “Some call it reverse discrimination, call it what you will, but that’s what [it has become] in practice,” he adds.

The Trump Effect on BRI

Leaders in the BRI space believe the Trump administration will help their industry blossom. Netzly wrote in a blog post that “President Trump’s 2025 agenda has provided a rare and compelling alignment with the principles of biblically responsible investing.” In just six weeks, “New leadership at federal agencies … and other reforms created a legal environment where Christian businesses can flourish.”

John and David Schneider, hosts of the Queer Money Podcast, urge the LGBTQ community to leverage their own financial power. They say the whole goal of BRI is to suck investing dollars from companies that are positive for the community and wield those investments for their own political gains.

“One of the things that our community doesn’t have that the Christian right has is one thing they coalesce around, right? They coalesce around biblical values and understand how they apply that in their lives,” says David Schneider. “We’re exactly in the place that the Christian right wants us to be,” he says. “Stressed out, spread out and unorganised.”

When it comes to fighting back; “We have more power than we think we do. We have been trained to believe that we are powerless,” says John Schneider, urging queer people to think more strategically about their money. While the LGBTQIA+ community doesn’t agree on everything, we do have one thing in common: protecting our rights. And there are plenty of queer people with investments to leverage in support of that – be it a retirement plan, stocks or simply a college fund or, at the very least, how you spend your money.

As BRI continues to boom, Netzly believes companies like his will continue to have more influence to use shareholders to push corporate powers away from LGBTQIA+ inclusive social policies.

Wendy Via of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism says that as the BRI movement grows, intolerance towards the LGBTQIA+ community may increase as well.

“The idea that we’re going to take our society backward and use finances as a way to do it. I mean, I think it’s appalling,” she says.

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An Uncloseted Media investigation has found that at least six Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups hold what’s known as Economic and Social Council consultative status.

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION

In November of 2023 at the United Nations in New York City, the Political Network for Values held their fifth Transatlantic Summit event.

The conference was called “Affirming universal human rights: Uniting Cultures for life, family, and fundamental freedoms.” It was attended by a variety of far-right Christian groups that have historically advocated for anti-LGBTQIA+ policies.

One of those groups is Alliance Defending Freedom. At the conference, Emilie Kao, the group’s senior counsel and vice president of advocacy strategy, took the floor to express her outrage that a Finnish doctor was put on trial for referring to homosexuality as “a developmental disorder,” “a shame and a sin” and as a form of “genetic degeneration.”

“Thank God she was unanimously acquitted,” said Kao.

Austin Ruse, president of the Center for Family and Human Rights (otherwise known as C-Fam), who has supported laws that would criminalise homosexual behaviour and has also said that hard left people that run modern universities should be “taken out and shot,” spoke about some of his group’s recent accomplishments. “There is no redefinition of the family because we stopped them. Sexual orientation and gender identity has never become a category of nondiscrimination in international law, because we have stopped them,” he said.

Kao, C-Fam and ADF did not respond to requests for comment. Ruse disputed that he called for the criminalization of gay sex, saying that he was only offering “a hypothetical.” He added that he has “never advocated that anyone be taken out and shot.”

The access and influence of these anti-LGBTQIA+ groups inside the UN isn’t limited to this summit. Both hold what’s known as Special Consultative status at the UN. And they’re not the only ones.

In a months-long investigation, Uncloseted Media found that at least six Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQIA+ hate groups hold this coveted status, which is granted by the UN’s Economic and Social Council.

“What’s astounding is I’m not sure anybody’s ever produced a list,” says Heidi Beirich, who oversaw SPLC’s annual designation of hate groups from 2012 to 2019. “These organisations have been stealthily inserting themselves into bodies whose beliefs they don’t share for years,” she says.

“Many of these organisations don’t even believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” she says.

Special Consultative Status—which is held by more than 5000 groups—gives members unique access to the UN and its subsidiary bodies, to the various human rights mechanisms of the organisation and to special events organised by the President of the General Assembly.

The UN did not respond to repeated interview requests as well as requests for comment.

“You have access to member states, right? So I think the danger of all of this is access to the members who make decisions on resolutions. Who make UN policy,” says Gillian Kane, director of global policy and research at Ipas, a non-governmental organisation that focuses on advancing gender equity and reducing the harm of U.S. foreign policy.

Kane, who attended the November Summit, says this status “legitimises these groups” who have clear track records that conflict with the core principles of the UN, like the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

“There’s nothing subtle about what they do. They hate gays and they’re unapologetic to go after it,” says Kane.

Many of these groups have been around for decades, advocating against the LGBTQIA+ community. Kao’s group, ADF, published a press release titled “ADF increases global impact with new status at United Nations” when they were granted consultative status in 2010. “ADF can now have a say when UN treaties and conventions are drafted that directly impact religious liberty and important matters related to the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family,” the release said. It goes on to say that “ADF will now be able to monitor and provide input on matters” affecting religious freedoms.

The group, which consists of hundreds of lawyers in the U.S. and around the globe, was founded in 1994 by Alan Sears, who co-authored The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today. Since then, they have advocated at the state and federal level for laws that promote conversion therapy and that would ban gays from serving in the military. In addition, they’ve testified in favour of laws that would strip transgender folks of the right to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, that would prevent them from changing the name on their birth certificate and that would ban their access to gender affirming healthcare.

In addition, they have been effective globally through their international arm, ADF International. In 2012 in Jamaica, they advocated for the retention of a a law that criminalises gay sex. That law remains in effect. And in 2013, members of ADF worked to defend a Belize statute that makes anyone engaging in LGBTQIA+ sex subject to a punishment of up to 10 years in prison.

The other groups—which include the Howard Center for Family Religion and Society (now known as International Organization for Family), Family Research Council, the Association of United Families International and the American Family Association of New York—all have similar track records.

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Family Research Council has advocated in favor of conversion therapy laws and continues to publish articles that falsely assert that “sexual orientation change efforts” are effective for gay people. And Tim Wildmon, the President of the American Family Association, is currently advocating for a boycott of Target for allowing trans people to use the bathroom or dressing room that matches their gender identity.

“Please use #BoycottTarget,” Wildmon wrote in a special update on their website.

Because of these track records, Beirich felt it was “a no brainer” to add them to the SPLC’s list of hate groups alongside the Ku Klux Klan, the American Defense Skinheads and Aryan Nations.

“We put them on the hate list because they demonise the entire LGBTQIA+ population in derogatory, dehumanising language, just like the Klan would with Black people or Jewish people,” says Beirich, now the co-founder and chief strategy officer at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

“People in the Christian right who have long demonised the LGBTQIA+ community have political power in this country, and it’s more normalised to hate queer people than to hate Black people for no damn good reason. Which is what we’re talking about. So it’s the biblically informed aspect of it that somehow legitimises it,” says Beirich, who adds that she has “absolutely no idea” how these groups secured this status.

So how do these groups get here? While they all conform to basic principles required for Special Consultative Status, such as being a registered nonprofit and having specialised expertise on issues relevant to the UN, they are also expected to act in conformity with “the spirit, purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,” which specifically states that members must promote and encourage respect for human rights, take action “to strengthen universal peace” and—specifically for members with consultative status—must promote policies that encourage “social progress.”

Neil Datta, the executive director for the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, says part of the reason these groups are granted this status is due to overworked civil servants who work for the NGO Branch of the UN and are in charge of a preliminary screening of these applicants.

“The folks reviewing these applications are not necessarily thematic experts on anything. So they’re tasked with a very dry job of processing different applications that come in, and very legitimately won’t know what all of these different groups are,” he says. “Imagine you had 15 climate groups applying and one didn’t believe in climate change. It’s not necessarily that easy to understand.”

Datta says it can be even harder to identify anti-LGBTQIA+ groups because they often operate under the guise of protecting the family or the rights of the child.

“These groups have very nice names that aren’t obviously anti-LGBTQIA+. And so the people reviewing these applications may not be able to pick up on some of the subtleties,” he says.

In addition, Datta says these groups use “very clever vocabulary” that sounds well meaning. But really, they are weaponising this language to penetrate powerful institutions like the UN “In reality, they’re using religious freedom as a fig leaf for hate speech.”

“But if you know your Catholic social doctrine, then you will recognise [this vocabulary] immediately.” Datta says common dog whistles such as “common good” or “human dignity” and “in favour of life [or] of the family” are used almost exclusively to limit the human rights of others, “usually in sexuality and reproduction.”

Datta says these “codewords” are another reason these groups go unnoticed within the UN. For example, during a three hour meeting at the November Transatlantic Summit event, participants used the term “human dignity” over 30 times.

After they get through the preliminary screening by UN civil servants, their application is reviewed by the NGO Committee—which meets twice a year—to decide who they will recommend for Special Consultative Status. After review, the recommended organisations are presented to ECOSOC for their final decision.

This committee includes 19 countries, including multiple countries that have extremely hostile policies against LGBTQIA+ people, like Algeria, where homosexual activity is punishable by up to two years in prison; and Eritrea, where homosexuality is illegal and can be punished with jail-time.

“It honestly depends on who’s sitting on that committee. So if you have countries that already have anti-LGBTQIA+ policies in place, they’re going to be friendly to inviting these groups in and approving their status,” says Kane.

Once these groups officially gain this status, they use religious freedom as a justification for promoting policies and laws that limit the rights of LGBTQIA+ people through the UN apparatus.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights does not yet explicitly protect folks who are discriminated against for their sexual orientation or gender identity. This lack of protection has given anti-LGBTQIA+ groups leverage in their arguments to roll back the rights of LGBTQIA+ folks.

Inside the UN, there are efforts to change this. For example, in 2019 the Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect published a Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech that outlines what constitutes hate speech and how to combat it. In it, they describe hate speech “as any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.”

Unsurprisingly, this new guidance is opposed by the anti-LGBTQIA+ hate groups. At the Political Network for Values Transatlantic Summit in November, ADF’s Kao said current hate speech laws protect too many different groups of people and in doing so infringe on religious freedom laws. “Who can possibly know what would fall under such an expansive definition of hate?” she said. “These laws give a veto to any offended person, allowing them to censor their neighbours.”

Beirich strongly disagrees. “You can’t use religion as a foil for harming communities and tearing into their civil and human rights. I don’t care,” she says, adding that the Ku Klux Klan has weaponised religion as a means to discriminate against Black people since it was founded in 1865.

“It’s one thing to live your life however you want to live it biblically inspired. It’s a different thing to have that affect other people,” says Beirich. “Keep your views to yourself.”

As these groups continue to operate inside the UN, what can be done? Datta says NGOs applying for Special Consultative Status should be subject to more rigorous background checks, where an independent body thoroughly examines the track record of applicants.

“What are the positions…of these organisations and what have they actually done?” says Datta. “What other things have they done which could be seen as having undermined human rights—the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights?”

He says using an independent body for this review would reduce the potential of political influences in the decision-making process.

As for those who already have Special Consultative Status, their status can be revoked if they don’t “conform at all times to the principles governing the establishment.”

Beirich feels strongly that should happen swiftly for all six anti-LGBTQIA+ groups that currently hold this status. “The United Nations should revoke the consultative status of people who stand opposed to the Universal Declaration. It shouldn’t stand for policies that are rolling back human rights—it’s absurd.”

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