The Backlash Against LGBTQ+ Is Real
But the Wounds Are (Mostly) Self-Inflicted
Over the past several weeks, U.S. businesses have been alerting local LGBTQ+ pride event organizers that they’re pulling their sponsorship this year.
For instance, after 30 years, Anheuser-Busch won’t again be sponsoring the St. Louis PrideFest.
Among sponsors dropping support for pride celebrations, Busch has gotten the most attention, due to the implosion of Bud Light following the disastrous 2023 online partnership with “trans influencer” Dylan Muvlaney. Fallout from that marketing misstep (‘hey, guys, drink Bud Light and lose your manhood!’) hasn’t fallen off:
But it’s not just Busch and Bud.
In San Francisco, as KRON 4 reported, along with Anheuser-Bush, Comcast, Diageo, Benefit Cosmetics, and others have dropped their sponsorship for this year’s pride event. According to organizers, “most cited a lack of funds for pulling out or no budget for it this year, but it was quite sudden.”
And it’s not just happening in big cities. Sponsors also dropped out of Franklin, Tennessee’s pride event, with the local ABC News affiliate reporting that “the political climate has changed.”
The pullback against assertions of LGBTQ Pride also isn’t limited to the private sector. For example, Utah recently banned LGBTQ+ flags from public schools and government buildings, and other states may follow.
Is Trump the Culprit?
Progressive activists point to the Trump administration, but that’s simplistic. More to the point, “gender ideology” and transgender craziness is driving away support and sponsorship for what once were Lesbian & Gay Pride events. Businesses don't want to endorse events that advocate putting males in girls’ and women’s sports and that champion medicalized transitioning of gender-nonconforming kids who can’t differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity (they only know they don’t fit the stereotypes about male and female).
Unfortunately, pride events now are heavily focused on trans activists’ demands that most Americans reject as dangerous to kids and women (i.e., social transitioning of gender-nonconforming minors behind parents' backs, banning therapy to treat minors with gender dysphoria, or allowing bio males in female locker rooms).
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has come out strongly against males who self-identify as female competing in girls’ sports, sex-transition procedures for minors, and transgender people serving in the military. Celebrations for LGBTQ+ Pride month and related events also have been cancelled in the military and federal agencies — but so have other commemorations that are based for racial and ethnic groups in a wide-ranging rejection of identity politics seen as more divisive than uniting.
Yet, despite what you may think of their policies, Trump appointed Scott Bessant, an openly gay man, as Treasury Secretary — the third highest cabinet position — and appointed openly gay diplomat Rick Grenell as presidential envoy for special missions.
And while he has moved to bar transgendered people from military service, Trump also made clear he has no issues with openly gay service members.
Gender Identity Takes Center Stage
What’s becoming more apparent is how lesbians and gays have suffered collateral damage as not just pride events, but advocacy by LGBTQ+ organizations overall, became increasingly focused on trans issues.
For instance, support for same-sex marriage fell as trans issue became the dominant focus of LGBTQ+ activism.
More generally, the backlash began, I believe, when activists abandoned the live and let live ethos that had characterized the successful lesbian and gay rights movement in favor of suing small business people such as bakers, photographers, and wedding plans for refusing jobs that required them to apply their creative talents to promote or celebrate same-sex marriages (and, later, gender transitioning) — with the expressed aim of using government to punish these proprietors with heavy and ongoing fines, seeking to bankrupt them.
Here’s how Chris Queen, a conservative PJ Media columnist, sees it:
The Rainbow Mafia went from "We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it" to "Bake the cake, bigot" to "Girls’ sports? Who cares?”
He adds:
Companies fooled around and found out; Bud Light took hits for teaming up with Dylan Mulvaney while Target felt the sting when it took its Pride Month clothing displays too far. Female athletes and parents of daughters made their voices heard that competing against boys and men in girls’ and women’s sports was dangerous and unfair.
(The Target display issue — often misreported — centered around transwomen’s “tuck” swimsuits being placed, in some stores, next to children’s Pride clothing. That got conflated into allegations about Target promoting swimsuits for trans kids, as the anti-LGBTQ side seized an opportunity and ran with it.)
Another issue that bears attention is how gender/nonbinary pronoun and language demands, with repercussions against employees and others who refuse to play along, have driven the backlash.
Is It ‘Homophobia’?
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently announced she had cancelled a $300,000 contract to educate “queer” and transgender farmers in San Francisco about food justice and food equality, and cancelled a similar contract in New York.
Rollins also cancelled a $600,000 contract in Louisiana that was studying the menstrual cycles of transgender men (again, this was out of the Ag Dept.).
[Commentator below is Patrick Bet-David.]
Are these “homophobic” actions by the Trump administration? Some activists think so, alas.
While these might be obvious examples of countering woke craziness, it’s also true that gender ideology and trans activism have re-opened the door to expressions of plain old homophobia in the guise of being against TQ+ extremism. That’s why the embrace of TQ+ demands by formerly LGB groups, including pride event organizers, needs to be revisited and rethought — before gay identity is completely subsumed by increasingly bizarre and unpopular trans queer dictats.
Subscribe to receive future posts by Stephen Henry Miller at no cost:Addendum: The More Things Change …
Back in October 1994, I penned a cover story for Christopher Street magazine titled “Who Stole the Gay Movement,” taking aim not at trans ideology, which wasn’t on anyone’s radar, but at the “political correctness” that would later evolve into various critical theories around intersectionality, or what became generally known as “woke.”
The magazine, sadly, was soon to fold but the Independent Gay Forum’s legacy blog, IGF Culturewatch, reposted it.
Addendum: Other Takes
After posting, I came across this interview with Julie Bindel, who discusses how the rise of gender ideology and queer theory have set back the cause of lesbian and gay rights.
And these thoughts from Andrew Doyle:
Blaming Trump isn’t going to fix the problem:
And finally:
OK, one more:
And another, because it’s so on point:
I am a Washington State resident and I and several other people wrote the Seattle Pride organization a protest letter that hits all of the things you talk about here. There’s a media blackout on the upset LGB voices in the United States, even though it’s liberal women and LGB people who helped rein in TQ crazy in the UK, not the religious right. Very flawed, neurotic, and even corrupt people are running our organizations and they are hiding a lot of things from our population (like what proper research says about the dangers of pediatric transition) while they spew propaganda. It goes over well at their nonprofit org parties as they bray about how victimized they are to foment a sense of panic that will make people donate to their organizations out of fear and continue to feed their unjustified salaries. LGBTQIA2S+ organizations from this last decade are worse for gay and lesbian people than anything I’ve seen conservative Republicans do since I came out 35 years ago.
https://thehomoarchy.substack.com/p/letter-sent-to-seattle-pride-highlighting
In SF it’s more T&Q than LGB as they have essentially taken over. I’m of the older persuasian as are my gay and lesbian friends who never bought into the t&q nonsense. Most of them stopped going to Pride since the takeover and are happy to see the sponsors drop out. Now if someone can figure how to get rid of t&q.