The nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization endorsed Hillary Clinton for president Tuesday despite having criticized multiple donors to her family foundation for committing rights violations.
Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate, will officially accept the endorsement from the Human Rights Campaign next week in Iowa.
The rights group decided to endorse Clinton despite the fact that the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has accepted millions of dollars from countries that the Human Rights Campaign has slammed for violating LGBT rights.
Particularly, the foundation has accepted between $10 million and $25 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and between $1 million and $5 million from the Friends of Saudi Arabia. The Government of Brunei Darussalam has also donated between $ 1 million and $5 million to the foundation.
Last June, the Human Rights Campaign singled out Saudi Arabia and Brunei as two of the eight countries that "prescribe the death penalty for homosexual conduct."
Furthermore, the Clinton Foundation has also received between $1 million and $5 million from the state of Qatar in addition to between $250,000 and $500,000 from Qatar’s 2022 Supreme Committee.
Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, wrote in June 2014 that Qatar is in "a league of its own" when it comes to violating the civil rights of LGBT individuals.
"Qatar is one of only 10 nations in the world that allow for the execution of LGBT individuals. While such a sentence is technically reserved for Muslims, homosexuality is punishable by up to seven years in prison for anyone living in or visiting the emirate," Griffin wrote in a Washington Post op-ed regarding the country’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
"According to Amnesty International, in recent years dozens of individuals have been sentenced to floggings of ‘40 to 100 lashes’ for crimes including ‘illicit sexual relations,’ among others. It is believed that many of those sentenced were foreigners; and a U.S. citizen in Qatar was whipped 90 times and served six months in prison for ‘homosexual activity’ in 1995."
Clinton said she was "proud" to have earned the endorsement Tuesday, commending the Human Rights Campaign on social media for "[fighting] with persistence and great courage for LGBT equality."
"Too many LGBT Americans still face discrimination--in employment, in housing, in education, in health care--because of who they are or who they love," Clinton said in a statement. "The stakes in this election couldn’t be higher."