Anheuser-Busch has learned the hard way that a nice grade on the “Corporate Equality Index” doesn’t help sell cases of beer. Maybe now businesses can stop caring about useless social justice grades from partisan organizations that hate half of the country.

Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light has seen its sales decline for the sixth straight week after the company decided to insult women by partnering with TikTok “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney, a man who acts like an insulting caricature of a woman. The company has been scrambling to get back in the good graces of conservative consumers, while Coors Light and Miller Lite have seen their sales increase.

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Meanwhile, Anheuser-Busch also lost its Corporate Equality Index score, which has been suspended because it hasn’t forcefully defended its partnership with Mulvaney. That made-up liberal activism score comes from the Human Rights Campaign, which uses the score to try and browbeat companies into being appropriately liberal. The HRC is giving Anheuser-Busch 90 days to return to liberal propaganda to earn back its perfect score.

The Human Rights Campaign uses its grading system to try and pressure organizations into stunts such as the one Bud Light took with Mulvaney. It’s social justice blackmail, designed to signal to activists and establishment media journalists (but I repeat myself) which companies should be named and shamed for not being sufficiently devoted to the social justice cause.

It’s also completely useless. What benefits are offered by the “Corporate Equality Index” other than avoiding the occasional social media mob of less than 1% of the population or the outrage from woke scolds at the Human Rights Campaign who openly hate half the country?

Anheuser-Busch executives should ask themselves a simple question: Would you rather reverse your current Bud Light sales declines or have a “perfect” social justice score from a left-wing organization? It’s not like that score was helping keep Bud Light sales afloat in the face of backlash or that partnering with Mulvaney led to some surge in popularity among “LGBTQ allies.”

The same question applies to other corporations. Does all the effort put into maintaining an arbitrary liberal activism score convey any real benefit? How many people reference the Human Rights Campaign before making a purchase? Is it worth jumping through a public relations minefield to keep a few liberal activists happy, especially when you’ve seen Bud Light step on one of those mines?

The risk of courting the approval of an organization that denounces half the country is that half the country could denounce you in response at any moment. Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch learned that the hard way. You wouldn’t run your company based on whether a child was going to give you a “good job” sticker, so why would you run it based on a whiny activist dangling a “Corporate Equality Index” score when the two make the same level of impact?

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