Pride Month is fast approaching, and Pride events nationwide are watching the corporate sponsorships they have been able to count on in the past dry up like they’ve been hit with a giant rainbow ShamWow, Pittsburgh Pride included.
For example, San Francisco Pride “is dealing with the potential loss of $300,000 in corporate sponsorship for its hugely popular annual parade, funding needed ahead of June’s Pride Month. Multiyear sponsors, including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and Diageo, have all backed away from participating,” according to USA Today.
It’s not a huge mystery why this is happening.
“Intent on staying out of the [Trump Administration’s] crosshairs, many big brands are backing away from LGBTQ+ celebrations of all sizes as part of a broader rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, leaving organizers from coast to coast,” reports the Washington Post, “with budget shortfalls at a time when most are anticipating higher turnout, as well as facing heightened safety and logistical challenges.”
In other words, at the same time the Trump Administration’s anti-LGBTQ+ crusade emboldens people who may want to enact violence on our community, he’s also scared away the funding that helps to ensure Pride events are not only fun, but also safe.
Look, corporations might be scared to piss off Trump right now, but they also did this to themselves. Corporations and the people who profit from them frequently make big campaign contributions to Republican candidates under the belief that Republicans are better for the economy (they are not). Now, Trump’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion (which, I will never tire of saying, are ALL GOOD THINGS) and his obsession with tariffs tanking the stock market and setting us up for a doll shortage at Christmas are proving that Republicans — who have the power in Congress to stop him but are choosing not to do that — were not exactly a safe bet.
Then there’s DEI itself. I am all for companies working on being more diverse, more equitable and more inclusive for women, Black and brown people, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people and other historically marginalized communities. It’s good for business! However, for a lot of companies, DEI was only surface deep. They didn’t exactly have a moral commitment to it, which was made clear by the number of companies that threw all things DEI in the trash as soon as Trump said, “Boo” (hi, Target).
Corporate support for LGBTQ+ people is obviously part of the DEI universe. Again, it’s telling how quickly some corporations have folded under the bigoted scrutiny of the Trump Administration.
People, myself included, have long complained about “rainbow washing,” which Fair Planet defines as “the practice of using rainbow-themed symbolism in branding, advertising, merchandise or social media, ostensibly in solidarity with LGBTQ+ people during Pride month, but without active support of LGBTQ+ people’s identities or rights.”
Selling rainbow flip flops, beach towels and t-shirts doesn’t mean that the purveyor of those goods isn’t also donating to Senator Anti-Trans, something that has far deeper implications for LGBTQ+ lives than merch. And I’m not going to lie. I am literally writing this while draped in a rainbow blanket that I bought from Kohl’s after Pride for less than $10.
I like seeing displays of rainbow and trans flag colors at normie places. It feels good. But it doesn’t necessarily do good.
Even the support of Pride events, which many corporations have shelled out big bucks for in the past, pales in comparison to the amount of money these corporations spend to get anti-LGBTQ+ candidates elected.
Fear of being targeted by an increasingly unhinged president isn’t the only factor making Pride sponsors nervous. GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told USA Today that “tariffs and other economic challenges have driven the recent pullbacks” and that “most companies are not scaling back this year.”
“As companies are getting squeezed, they’re squeezing all the other places where they market,” Ellis said.
To which I say, of course. But that doesn’t explain the sponsors who are still in the game but don’t want their logos visible in any way that could tie them to the Pride events they’re ostensibly “supporting.”
This really is a time when LGBTQ+ people are going to see who our real friends are. And those are the folks who are not only sponsoring Pride events, but who are also refusing to cave on DEI because they see it as more than just a buzzword (or buzz acronym, if you will) and not helping to usher bigots into office.
At the end of the day, the LGBTQ+ community has each other and the actual people who love and care about us. And you can’t put a price on that.
