Human Rights Campaign Rejects Weapons Company Sponsorships After Pressure Around Israel Genocide

Following years of organizing by LGBTQ+ activists, advocates for queer rights and Palestinian solidarity announced Tuesday that the Human Rights Campaign, one of the largest LGBTQ+ organizations in the world, has stopped taking cash from manufacturers Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, according to the statement from the Gender Liberation Movement and Adalah Justice Project. 

Protesters had accused HRC of “pinkwashing,” a term used to describe the use of Israel’s publicly pro-LGBTQ+ stance to distract from its violations of Palestinians’ human rights.

“Organizations like HRC can no longer prioritize proximity to power over the well-being of our people.”

“Organizations like HRC can no longer prioritize proximity to power over the well-being of our people, nor center inclusion in the very systems that are killing us,” said the statement from the Gender Liberation Movement and Adalah Justice Project. “Freedom, equality, and justice for our queer and trans siblings here can only be achieved when we collectively confront the systems that are harming communities everywhere.”

(Neither Northrop Grumman nor Raytheon, which rebranded as RTX in 2023, immediately responded to requests for comment.)

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Both weapon-makers have been seen as profiting off Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Raytheon and Northrop Grumman’s stock prices spiked after October 7, 2023, as Israel ramped up its attacks.

Since Israel’s assault on Gaza, HRC’s sponsorships had increasingly come in for criticisms from sympathetic celebrities speaking out on Gaza.

At a February 2024 protest outside HRC’s annual gala, protesters condemned the groups’ sponsorship by Northrop Grumman. 

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“[HRC’s] initiatives that are meant to benefit us are being funded by a weapons manufacturer. Not cute, not queer,” actor Indya Moore told the crowd of protesters. “Their bullets, their bombs, and their missiles are massacring Palestinians who are also queer and trans and deserving of a human rights campaign.” 

While accepting HRC’s own “Visibility Award” for LGBTQ+ representation in March 2025, actor Hannah Einbinder condemned the silencing of the Palestinian struggle and the ongoing genocidal war and called out oil companies like Shell and BP for their role in the climate crisis. Investigations have shown that BP’s oil supply is deeply involved in Israel’s war machine.

Einbinder has repeatedly called attention to Palestine and boycotting Israel’s warfare. In September 2025, she made headlines for calling for a free Palestine during her Emmy acceptance speech, and the same month she joined a boycott organized by Film Workers for Palestine against Israeli film institutions implicated in the Gaza war and “apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

A statement provided to The Intercept from HRC said Raytheon and Northrop Grumman no longer sponsored the group, but didn’t directly address when or how the relationships ended. The statement cast the changes as of a piece with the group’s long-held stances against extremism.

“While our focus is on LGBTQ+ equality in the United States, we have spoken out about the crisis, the rising cost of extremism in the United States and around the globe and how Islamophobia, anti-semitism and anti-LGBTQ hatred are globally linked,” a spokesperson for HRC said. “We have also championed the right to protest here in the United States, as it and other pro-democratic principles are being undermined and threatened by this administration.”

Adalah and Gender Liberation Movement said that pro-Palestine groups including No Pride in Genocide and Writers Against the War on Gaza had pushed for this move since at least October 7, 2023.

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Highlighting Northrop Grumman in particular for its production of weapons used in Israel’s genocide against Gaza, the Adalah and the Gender Liberation Movement statement says, “These are tools of state-sanctioned destruction and death, not of human rights or equality, and they do not distinguish between queer and straight lives.” 

The two groups also noted in their statement that HRC did not commit to permanently rejecting cash from any weapons manufacturers, nor did it adhere to organizers’ demands to call for an arms embargo on Israel.

The statement says, “Our work is not finished, and we remain committed to the struggle.”