Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. In 1792, amid growing distrust among shareholders in the emerging American economy. The so-called Buttonwood Agreement created the first American stock exchange. Seeking to restore trust and free exchange in a volatile marketplace environment, it laid the foundation for what would become the New York Stock Exchange.
Well, today, because of rampant politicization and big business, the trust with consumers and shareholders about corporate America has also eroded significantly. Remember how Target was selling gender-neutral clothes to young kids and so-called chest binders to adolescent girls? An organization that has been pushing for the last several years corporate America out of ideological activism is the 1792 Exchange. And the results of their work is stunning. The exchange's mission is to produce research and develop resources to help steer public companies in the US back to neutral on ideological issues so that they can best serve their shareholders and customers with excellence and integrity.
That's a quote. And neutral is certainly the right word because the goal is not to form a theocracy within these corporate entities. It's to simply depoliticize them and to free the market in the process. Corporations should not be putting their thumbs on the scale of political and social issues, as so many have been, especially aligning to advance progressive and left-leaning social justice causes. Corporate America has, in fact, become the latest step in the Marxist goal of the long march through the institutions, even to the extent of serving causes counter to the preferences of a large portion of their consumer base.
Think about Bud Light or Harley Davidson. These decisions by corporations have had incredible ripple effects across the wider culture, from how employees are trained to how funds are spent in support of LGBTQ legislation and other progressive causes. Much of the activity can be categorized as what Stephen Sukup called, quote, woke capital in his book about corporate political correctness. For example, back in 2023, the Claremont Institute published a database tracking corporate contributions and pledges to the Black Lives Matter organization. The results were jarring.
According to Newsweek, companies and corporations pledged or contributed $82.9 billion to the BLM movement and related causes. That includes more than $123 million to the BLM parent organization directly. Look, a cultural narrative can gain incredible traction when it's reinforced by corporate entities. For years, in fact, America's leading corporate LGBTQ ideology enforcer has been the Human Rights Campaign. Their corporate equality index grades companies on their pro-LGBTQ stances.
For years, as Sukup described, and I quote, the CEI has become an enormous concern for companies that desperately want to avoid the label homophobic and thus do everything they can to appease an ally with HRC. In fact, companies have fallen all over themselves to earn a perfect score on the CEI, which involved, among other requirements, designing corporate policies to ensure medical benefits for so-called transgender treatments.
Well, over the last couple of years, the 1792 Exchange launched a back-to-business tracker to identify companies that withdrew from the index, that eliminated their DEI programs, and avoided taking polarizing stances on political or cultural matters. The index puts counter pressure on these corporations, encouraging them to return to neutral. And it informs the public when activism is driving the agenda. It is a wonderful resource to leverage influence as consumers, organizations, and families.
Well, according to this index, and here's the good news, the corporate tides of America seem to be changing. In 2026, 61% fewer Fortune 1000 companies and 65% fewer Fortune 500 companies chose to participate in the HRC's CEI. That kind of a decline suggests that many businesses no longer fear the HRC. They no longer fear the repercussions and the intimidation. That the organization previously leveraged against them.
This kind of a drop represents a hit to what the Daily Signal has labeled the transgender industrial complex. The CEI has strong-armed businesses for far too long. The retreat from the CEI by so many corporations is a welcome development indeed, and it suggests that certain trends are not inevitable. Perhaps a backwards march through the institutions could even be possible. At the very least, Christians should be encouraged by this news and reminded that resisting what is evil in culture can be, in and of itself, an act of restoration.
And the 1792 exchange is a wonderful example of just that. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carrico. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources or to share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org.
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