The Trump administration’s designation of June as “Title IX month” and a backlash against transgender athletes in women’s sports have left LGBTQ advocates debating the future of Pride Month as corporate sponsorship dips.
“It’s a wake-up call,” said the Rev. Anne-Marie Zanzal, a self-described “lesbian mom” and United Church of Christ minister who helps LGBTQ youth come out in Tennessee. “There are multiple stories of corporations pulling out nationwide and pride organizations having to return to grassroots fundraising.”
Gareth Gallagher, a Los Angeles-based LGBTQ event planner, said, “This year, there is a clear tension around Pride Month. While transgender visibility remains high in activist circles, some of the more mainstream Pride events are being sadly more moderate.”
Companies that have withdrawn or reduced support for this month’s annual celebration of gay rights include Comcast, Target, Walmart, PepsiCo, Mastercard, Garnier, Citigroup, Anheuser-Busch, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Skyy Vodka, Lowe’s Home Improvement and defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
In an April survey of Fortune 500 and Global 1000 corporate executives, Gravity Research found that 39% planned to decrease their overall engagement with Pride Month, compared with 41% who planned no changes. None said they planned to increase involvement.
Among those rethinking their support for Pride Month, 61% cited “the Trump administration” as their top reason, with “conservative policymakers and activists” not far behind.
“The Trump administration’s declaration of June as ’Title IX Month’ shifts the national conversation from gender ideology to fairness and women’s rights in sports,” said Phillip Dickson, CEO of Monorail, a conservative investing app. “Consumers are voting with their wallets, and brands are listening.”
Mr. Dickson pointed to successful boycotts of Target over its displays of transgender children’s clothing and of Bud Light over its use of transgender spokesperson Dylan Mulvaney as proof that “the backlash is mainstream.”
May Mailman, senior White House policy strategist and deputy assistant to the president, said Title IX month confirms that President Trump is “not an ally in drag shows for kids” or in “taking women’s spaces.”
She said recent Trump administration moves to ban transgender soldiers and federal funding for sex-change operations likewise reflect the “truth [that] “you can’t change your sex.”
“The problem is that pride has become a corporate month that’s really about selling T-shirts, transing the kids and ignoring biological sex,” Ms. Mailman said in a phone interview. “It’s nice to see most corporations realize their bottom line is improved by not turning sexual orientation into a children’s show.”
Pride Month, an annual commemoration of the June 1969 Stonewall riots that the gay community organized in New York City’s Greenwich Village, originally focused on same-sex marriage.
Corporate sponsors and progressive organizers gradually emphasized the right of children to transition from their birth sex into other gender identities after the Supreme Court legalized gay nuptials over a decade ago.
Pride Month in recent years has emphasized “family friendly” events rallying support for transgender athletes, K-12 policies hiding gender transitions from unsupportive parents and health insurance coverage of sex-change treatments for minors.
Those activities — including drag shows and drag story hours in public libraries and schools — sparked lawsuits from conservative parental rights groups and a flurry of state laws designed to keep children from changing genders.
“The people who typically show up in pride celebrations are the same people who show up consistently,” said Ashley T. Brundage, a Florida transgender woman and former board vice chair of the advocacy group GLAAD during the first Trump administration. “Where the attendance is potentially reduced from the trans community would be from people who are not ’out’ yet due to the current climate.”
Kimberly Fletcher, president of Moms for America, predicted that “Pride Month will likely fade under Trump’s watch” as long as organizers continue stressing trans issues.
“Parents are fed up with hypersexualized content being force-fed to children under the guise of education,” Ms. Fletcher said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.