"Corporate Pride Is Dying. Good."

The sudden withdrawal of big corporate sponsors from Pride events is an opportunity, not a crisis.

AS PRIDE MONTH kicks off under a hostile federal government that takes its cues from a homophobic and transphobic far-right movement, the typical steady drip of rainbow-painted logos and feel-good news has been replaced with a stream of coverage of corporations pulling their sponsorship dollars from LGBTQ+ Pride events. This sudden withdrawal presents a material problem in queer circles, as advocates struggle to plan the increasingly bloated festivals that corporate cash has enabled in recent years. 

It’s also an opportunity.

The corporate exodus has been swift and financially devastating. [...]

But it’s far from clear that that money was doing much to advance the interests of LGBTQ+ people. What started as a remembrance of the fury and desperation of the Stonewall riots has slowly been sanitized and co-opted into a series of stale, borderline apolitical affairs. Over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, companies began dipping their corporate toes into LGBTQ+ pride events. Then came the post-Obergefell gold rush after 2015, when the landmark Supreme Court case legalized gay marriage and brand activism hit its peak.

Suddenly, every toothpaste and telecom company wanted a float in the parade. No corporation, no matter its line of business or its track record, was considered too amoral for inclusion.

Fast forward to 2025, the political winds have shifted — proving it all the more essential to revive the authentic, full-throated culture of protest that once characterized Pride. The Trump administration has pursued an aggressive anti-LGBTQ+ agenda, including spurious orders against private entities’ DEI policies and frontal assaults on the rights of trans people. The National Park Service erased the word “transgender” from the website for the Stonewall National Monument. At the state and local level, conservative activism to roll back progress on LGBTQ+ rights has reached a boiling point. Over 588 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures so far this year. More than 50 of them have already been passed into law.

All of a sudden, the rainbow logos that corporations loved rolling out on the first of June are seen as a massive political and even legal risk. The performative allyship has morphed into silence. Good.

Corporate support was never about genuine solidarity. Instead, it was largely a cynical marketing ploy to tap into the perceived disposable income of LGBTQ+ Americans, who represent roughly a trillion and a half dollars in annual buying power and have a higher propensity to spend than most other demographics. After spending June pushing rainbow products, corporations go back to business as usual on July 1, often funding the very politicians now empowered to strip us of our rights. [...]

The need to be brand-friendly sanitized queer expression and pushed any semblance of real human rights activism to the margins. [...]

Crucially, this devil’s bargain with big business has devastated our own community’s ability to be good allies to those suffering from corporate abuses. How vigorously can an LGBTQ+ organization in Columbus, reliant on a hefty sponsorship check from Walmart, critique that corporation’s rampant employee abuse or the systematic practices it uses to squeeze distributors and destroy smaller competitors? When PepsiCo, a company now scaling back its NYC Pride support, is simultaneously embroiled in controversies over forced labor and devastating water exploitation, does their past generosity buy them silence or a gentler critique from LGBTQ+ advocates who might otherwise join environmental and labor activists in demanding accountability? 

Or consider Citigroup, a bank with a rap sheet of predatory lending accusations that played a starring role in the 2008 financial crisis, which is now also scaling back Pride support. What, aside from their money, justified welcoming them into the tent in the first place? And what about tech giants like Meta, whose social media monopoly and increasingly predatory algorithms have spurred homophobic and transphobic hate and pushed a generation of young people — and especially LGBTQ+ young people — into mental health crises? Will their newfound coziness with the right spur LGBTQ+ people to not just cut ties, but reconsider the role Big Tech is playing in the unmooring of our society and mobilize against it?  (None of the corporations mentioned in this article responded to The Intercept’s requests for comment on their charitable practices or past controversies.) [...]

Pride can once again be funded by and accountable to the community it serves, centered on the ongoing fight for a more holistic form of liberation, and unafraid to bite the corporate hands that were never actually feeding us.