Human Rights Campaign suspends Google from corporate rankings

The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights group, has pulled Google from its Corporate Equality Index (CEI) after the technology giant did not pull an app that promotes conversion therapy from its app store.

The Human Rights Campaign said in the footnotes to this year’s CEI ratings that it pulled Google after becoming aware of the app for Living Hope Ministries, a group that says it advocates for “committed, monogamous, heterosexual” relationships and says “anything less than this ideal falls short of God’s view for humanity.”

{mosads}In the footnotes of the CEI, the Human Rights Campaign criticized Living Hope Ministries’s promotion of “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation.

“Such practices have been rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization for decades. Minors are especially vulnerable, and conversion therapy can lead to depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness, and suicide,” the Human Rights Campaign noted. “Pending remedial steps by the company to address this app that can cause harm to the LGBTQ community, the CEI rating is suspended.”

Google declined to comment to The Hill. 

Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have each removed the Living Hope Ministries app from their stores, according to Axios.

Axios also reported that the Human Rights Campaign has sought a meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai but has not had its requests replied to.

The suspension of Google’s rating marks the third time that a company’s rating has been withheld from the index, according to Fortune.

Walmart was reinstated this year after being suspended last year following allegations that transgender employees weren’t protected from discrimination. Saks Inc. was withheld in 2015 amid a discrimination lawsuit brought by an employee who was transgender.