A Call for Pride Beyond Militarism

For over four decades, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has been recognized as a leader in the fight for equality. But in a moment when queer and trans people around the world are being targeted by military violence, genocide, and state repression, we must ask: equality within what?


We write to you not despite our queerness, but because of it. As LGBTQIA+ people rooted in justice movements, we are outraged by HRC’s continued relationships with weapons manufacturer Northrop Grumman—and your refusal to publicly denounce the genocide unfolding against the Palestinian people in Gaza.


This is not a new concern. HRC’s historic alignment with U.S. militarism, from championing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal to defending the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ personnel in imperial wars, reflects a deeper institutional pattern: one that prioritizes proximity to power over challenging its violence. This inclusion-at-any-cost strategy has come at the expense of queer and trans lives globally, especially those in communities devastated by U.S. military interventions.


We recognize that many queer and trans people have sought military service as a means of survival: accessing employment, education, housing, and healthcare that are otherwise denied in a country that criminalizes our existence. This is not a failure of those individuals, but a condemnation of the conditions that leave militarism as one of the few viable options for survival. HRC’s focus on inclusion in violent systems does not alleviate this injustice. It legitimizes and sustains it. What is inclusion if it props up the very systems killing us?


HRC’s silence on Gaza echoes a decades-long silence around U.S.-backed militarism in places like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and beyond—where queer and trans people have never been protected by empire, only punished by it. The pattern is clear: war is not liberation.


According to watchdog site Investigate, Northrop Grumman supplies the Israeli military with missile systems, fighter jets, and other weapons used to obliterate homes, schools, hospitals, and entire families in Gaza. These are tools of state-sanctioned destruction and death; not of human rights or equality. Bombs and missiles do not distinguish between queer and straight lives.


And yet, for years, HRC has accepted sponsorship from Northrop Grumman and listed them among its “Platinum Partners.” When protests and public pressure mounted, their name quietly disappeared from your website. But without any public acknowledgment, apology, or commitment to change. This is not accountability. It’s erasure.


We demand that HRC take the following actions:

  • Immediately sever all ties—financial, symbolic, and strategic—with Northrop Grumman and other institutions profiting from militarism and genocide.

  • Publicly commit to refusing future funding from weapons manufacturers or entities complicit in state violence.

  • Issue a public call for a permanent ceasefire, an arms embargo on Israel, and an end to U.S. military support for the genocide in Gaza.


These demands are not abstract. They emerge from decades of queer resistance to systems of war, empire, and pinkwashing. HRC’s own history—honoring military drag shows while staying silent on military massacres—has revealed the limitations of visibility politics. Now is the time to move from symbolic representation to structural alignment.


We write this letter now as the world witnesses mass starvation in Gaza that is engineered, documented, and undeniable. UN officials, humanitarian organizations, and even major U.S. news outlets have confirmed what Palestinians have been saying for months: this is a genocide. Children are dying not just from bombs, but from hunger. The world is watching, and so is history. Your silence is not neutrality; it is complicity.


Real queer liberation does not come from corporate sponsorships or proximity to state power. It comes from the streets of Gaza, from queer migrants crossing borders, from Black trans youth facing militarized policing, from organizers refusing to make peace with empire.


HRC has the platform and responsibility to course-correct. You are not being asked to lead this movement—but you are being asked to stop undermining it. The grassroots are already showing the way.


We call on you to remember: Queer and trans people have always been at the frontlines of liberation struggles—not to be included in war machines, but to dismantle them.

You can still choose courage over complicity. Do not let this moment pass.