BP funds homophobia: an open letter |

BP has built a reputation for itself as a LGBTQ-friendly employer, with Pride floats, a Stonewall top employer badge, and recruitment events for LGBTQ students. But BP’s donations and deals also keep in office notoriously homophobic politicians[1], from US Congressman John Culberson to Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. We started this open letter to call on LGBTQ+ people working at BP to stop these donations.

Open letter to LGBTQ people working at BP

First Name

Last Name

Organisation, Workplace or University, if relevant

We’re writing to you as LGBTQ individuals who want to make the world a better place. Many of us know what it feels like to turn on the television and see a politician denying our existence, or blaming us for the world’s ills. We believe that you - like us - feel that BP shouldn’t be enabling homophobia and transphobia.

BP has a reputation as an LGBTQ-friendly company, a member of Stonewall’s Top 100 employers, “proud to be a business where you can be yourself”. But while sending floats to Pride parades and running LGBTQ recruitment events, BP is sadly funding politicians that threaten our rights and back Donald Trump’s politics of hate.

Through its PAC, BP and its employees donate a sizeable amount of money for election campaigns in the US. The recipients of the donations are selected by senior BP staff.

In the last two election cycles (2014 and 2016), the only two congressmen to remain in BP’s top five donation recipients are Republicans John Culberson and John Cornyn, elected on a Tea Party platform that stated "Homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths that have been ordained by God”.

BP was John Culberson’s biggest donor in both the 2014 and 2016 election cycles. His constituents involve a large LGBTQ+ community in Houston's Montrose area. In 1993 Culberson signed onto a statement that called homosexuality a psychiatric condition  that “endangers the public health” and said that gays and lesbians represent “a great reservoir of dangerous sexually transmitted diseases”. Culberson has never openly renounced this stance and has remained resolutely homophobic.

BP’s protegees in Congress (Culberson, Cornyn, and others besides, such as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell) have repeatedly voted against same-sex marriage and against anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Now they will be among those who support Donald Trump’s plans to dismantle existing protections for LGBTQ people.

BP’s support for politicians like Cornyn and Culberson, not to mention its support for homophobic regimes like those in Russia and Egypt, is incompatible with its “inclusive” brand and promoting LGBTQ rights.

BP has a choice - it doesn’t need to fund the campaigns of virulently homophobic politicians. It shouldn’t be supporting this type of politics - especially not at a time like this.

As members of the LGBTQ community internationally, we ask you to use your power for change. We call on you to use your voice to push that donations and endorsement to homophobic, transphobic and racist politicians are canceled, by writing to BP’s board, your region’s chief Diversity and Inclusion officer, and engaging the BP Pride network.

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Endnotes:

keep in office notoriously homophobic politicians: https://platformlondon.org/p-publications/fight-bp-pinkwashing-briefing/