Progressive Insurance Co. Promotes Homosexuality

Boasts of 100% ranking with (anti-Christian) homosexual lobby group Human Rights Campaign

The above is taken from the Progressive Insurance Company website marketing outreach to "proud" homosexuals. Progressive's "Faces of Pride" ad campaign features old photos and paintings like the above positively depicting homosexuality, coupled with commentary bemoaning that people once had to hide their homosexuality. Progressive is wrong to promote homosexual lifestyles, which are immoral, often unhealthy, and condemned by God. Contact Progressive at 1-800-PROGRESSIVE (800-776-4737; hit '0" for operator)

_____________________________________

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality begins its ongoing project highlighting “100%” pro-homosexual/pro-‘transgender’ corporations as measured by a leading “gay” lobby group

Promoting "Gay Pride": Progressive's Facebook marketing page for homosexuals lists "gay pride" parades across the nation. It is irresponsible and wrong -- and sends a terrible message to children -- to promote homosexual behavior, which is immoral and condemned by God (who offers change and redemption through Jesus Christ: see 1 Corinthians chapter 6). The above photo of go-go boys atop a float at a homosexual "pride" parade is a typical scene at any big-city "pride" event. We added the box and text.

By Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

Like many other major corporations, executives at Progressive Casualty Insurance Company (1-800-PROGRESSIVE, or 1-800-776-4737; hit “0” for operator) are betting that they will get more business marketing to people practicing homosexuality than they will lose from people who oppose homosexuality. Progressive has launched a new web- and print-based marketing outreach to homosexuals called “Faces of Pride,” in which they affirm homosexual relationships and boast of their 100-percent ranking with the homosexual lobby group Human Rights Campaign’s “Corporate Equality Index”. States Progressive:

“Corporate Equality for All

“We’re proud of our perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. That’s because we’re always striving to be a company that celebrates diversity in everything we do.”

To view Progressive’s web page dealing with homosexuality, go here: http://www.progressive.com/glbt/

How HRC’s rigged rating system works

To earn a perfect 100-percent ranking with HRC and its “Corporate Equality Index” for 2010, a corporation must meet five sets of “positive-behavior” criteria and avoid one set of “negative” behaviors. The bulk of HRC scorecard’s involves getting points for implementing “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” nondiscrimination policies and providing corporate benefits to homosexual/transgender employees and their same-sex partners. To view the HRC requirements on the organization’s website, go to page 5 on this online PDF document.

1. Criterion 1 requires that the corporation establish a “sexual orientation” corporate nondiscrimination policy and engage in “diversity training” to implement it. (AFTAH readers will be well aware that such “training” usually propagates only a homosexualist ideology and makes no room for teaching respect for and understanding of moral or religious opponents of homosexual behavior.)
2. Criterion 2 requires the same nondiscrimination policy and diversity training based on “gender identity and expression.” To get 5 points and the full credit in this category (15 points possible), HRC stipulates that: “2c)
   Offers transgender-inclusive insurance coverage for at least one type of benefit: At least one: Counseling by a mental health professional; pharmacy benefits covering hormone therapy and other associated lab procedures; medically necessary surgical procedures such as hysterectomy; or short-term leave for surgical procedures.”;
3. Criterion 3 requires provision of various domestic-partner health insurance and other benefits (providing “adoption assistance” helps fulfill one part of this section);
4. Criterion 4 requires the corporation to support a homosexual employees resource group or “diversity council.”

The combination of Criteria 5 and 6 essentially locks an aspiring “100-percent pro-homosexual” corporation to aggressively affirm homosexuality with company dollars AND not do anything that could be construed as “anti-gay”:

• Criterion 5: “Engages in appropriate and respectful advertising and marketing or sponsors LGBT community events or organizations”
• Criterion 6: Employer exhibits responsible behavior toward the LGBT community; does not engage in action that would undermine LGBT equality

Progressive Insurance Co.’s advertising campaign fulfills Point #5 above. However, if Progressive executives were to balance their homosexuality-related giving by, say, making a gift to Americans For Truth or PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays), they would immediate lose their perfect rating with HRC for “undermining LGBT equality.” Or imagine a company supporting a state amendment to preserve the historic definition of marriage as between a man and a woman — it would lose its perfect HRC rating for engaging in activity that “undermines LGBT equality.” (HRC and all homosexual organizations crusade for same-sex “marriage” using the euphemism of “marriage equality.”)

HRC cannot tolerate real diversity

There is little doubt of the accuracy of this assertion — i.e., the rigidity by which HRC applies its stipulation that business NOT “undermine” the homosexual agenda (“gay equality”). HRC actively works to ban opposing moral viewpoints from “diversity” sessions. AFTAH readers will recall that in 2007 it was HRC that stepped in and pressured DiversityInc magazine to dis-invite this writer from a “Religion in the Workplace” discussion (to which HRC staffer Daryl Herrschaft had also been invited). DiversityInc’s editor had asked me to speak representing the perspective of faith-based employees who believe homosexuality is wrong. But such true “viewpoint diversity” was intolerable to HRC and Herrschaft, who threatened to boycott the panel discussion unless I as the lone conservative voice was dropped as a participant. Herrschaft’s intolerant gambit worked and I was dis-invited as a speaker.

In the same vein, HRC and other homosexual activists have strenuously fought any attempt to encourage corporations to fund PFOX as an “ex-gay” group for the purposes of fostering genuine diversity.

Progressive's website boasts of the company's 100-percent ranking with HRC, a homosexual activist group that is working to redefine Christianity to support homosexuality -- and which regularly demonizes as "haters" Christians and pro-family Americans who oppose the homosexual and transsexual agenda.

Surely, most Americans and people of faith are unaware of the carefully laid “trap” that HRC activists have set up to pressure corporations to do their bidding. Despite the controversial nature of homosexuality — and the fact that many millions of employees of various faith backgrounds (or no faith) regard homosexual behavior and relationships as immoral or unnatural — a company cannot achieve a balanced approach on this issue without losing its 100-percent HRC “Corporate Equality” rating.

Note also that the Corporate Equality Index’s transgender benefits requirement (2.c. above) was added in 2006 — pointing to an escalating set of requirements that corporations must fulfill to attain HRC’s “100-percent” designation.

It also should be noted that as part of its agenda, Human Rights Campaign has embarked on a “gay” theological campaign that seeks to reinterpret the Bible and Christianity as supporting homosexual relationships. This claim is completely at odds with Judeo-Christian history and tradition on the subject of homosexuality. (See AFTAH article: “VIDEO: Satan’s Talking Points? HRC’s Harry Knox Claims Homosexuality Is ‘Gift from God’ in MSNBC Debate with CWA’s Matt Barber.”) Moreover, HRC has routinely equated sincere religious religious and moral opposition to homosexuality with “hate,” thereby practicing its own form of bigotry — against people of faith who merely are trying to follow their conscience and God’s will.