Corporate Funding is Leaving Pride. Good.

The Stonewall Riots were a march against police brutality, informing New York of the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and starting the Gay Liberation movement.

Interestingly, queer spaces at the time were run by organized crime. This shouldn’t be a surprise; business support often comes before public or government support, as creating queer spaces was, and still is, profitable. But just like organized crime didn’t protect their queer customers at Stonewall, corporations are not going to protect their customers today.

Time for a history lesson. As gay rights increased in the 1990’s, businesses making a profit off of the queer community started to go mainstream. For the LGBTQ+ community, initially, this was a boon. Pride was still rebuilding after the catastrophe of AIDS, and was starting to increasingly diversify to include Bi- and Trans-representation. An influx of funding, particularly from California-based companies like Apple and IBM, seemed almost reasonable.

The floodgates opened once gay marriage became legal. The 2000’s saw larger corporations like Coca-Cola and Google sponsoring Pride Parades. Gay people were a new, exploitable demographic for businesses looking for market penetration seeking to capture D.I.N.K.s, or Double-Income, No Kids. And the easiest way to access this demographic became sponsoring Pride. Pride events became better funded, and continued to expand.

Years passed, and suddenly we had Rainbow McDonald’s French Fries. And the truly unhinged Double-Bottom Burger from Burger King. Corporate logos became rainbow-colored every June. Increasing funding meant previously unchampioned causes like Trans Rights became mainstream, and Pride Parades became family events where children could know from the very beginning they could be themselves.

But while corporations were funding Pride Parades, they never stopped backing anti-LGBTQ+ groups. Corporations poured money and resources into countries with abysmal gay rights, then donated money to pride in a practice that became known as rainbow washing. As long as companies donated, they were not held responsible. One of the worst offenders, Gilead, the pharmaceutical company making PReP, sponsored NYC Pride but continued to refuse to release their patent for the lifesaving drug to make it affordable. Organizations like NYC’s Reclaim Pride became founded to keep the message on point and disengage from corporate interests. And they were right.

We’re now seeing corporations pull their support from Pride, because it’s no longer profitable. For those paying attention, this is no surprise: corporations are fair-weather friends at best, and while their money was used for some positive action, we can’t be surprised they ran when the going got tough. After all, it’s tradition.

But we can decide to use this rug-pull to get back to the roots of Pride. Community groups across the country are refocusing on political action, instead of hiring big-name entertainment and throwing a party. Good. We don’t need parties, we don’t need parades. We need Pride Marches, where we demand our rights.