Today’s moment of schadenfreudelicious zen comes from Bloomberg. Pour a delicious cup of coffee, sit in the comfy chair, and read on:
With Pride festivals and parades fast approaching, organizers in major US cities are scrambling to make up hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost corporate sponsorships.
Many are tapping smaller businesses and local communities to ensure their signature annual events proceed as planned. But they say the shortfalls are cutting into funding to support other LGBTQ programs throughout the year — and their long-term viability.
Over in Minnesota, Andi Otto, Executive Director of Twin Cities Pride, argues, “We spend our money as a community in these corporations and I want them to give back.” That’s a remarkable sense of entitlement, Andi. Should every “community” that shops in America demand kickbacks for doing so?
I once calculated how much more we consumers spend to buy stuff from corporations that insist on social activism. I would love nothing more than to shop at a company that spends zero money on anything other than business — and passes the savings along to me. I loathe being made to support left-wing corporate pieties because I need to buy something.
Read my report here: The Woke Tax: How Much Extra You Pay for Woke Companies' Leftist Policies.
But in 2025, it’s all trending in the right direction. New York City and Seattle’s Pride organizations each say they’re suffering a $350k deficit this year. Pride St. Louis is short $150k. Twin Cities Pride is about $200k short for its June Pride bacchanalia. So is the infamous San Francisco festival.
“Will we be able to keep the doors open?” San Francisco Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford pondered. “You know, that's what I'm most concerned about now.”
Somehow, I doubt San Francisco will ever have trouble being gay enough. I really don’t see any reason why normal, uninvolved people thousands of miles away need to subsidize it through forced contributions when we purchase ordinary things.
In reality, it costs nothing simply to be gay.
A Gravity Research survey found that 40% of “corporate executives across various sectors — from federal contractors to health care companies to consumer brands —” are planning to cut their companies’ support of Pride 2025 observances. This is on top of the massive withdrawal and realignment that began in 2023 in a fundamental societal backlash to the BLM-DEI-LGBTQ-3.14159… kulturpusch normals had suffered under since the 2020 Summer of Love.
How did this magnificent reversal of leftism get underway? “Conservative scrutiny is really the top driver of change,” said Gravity Research president Luke Hartig. That’s you and me, friend. We may pause here to take some satisfaction that we are successfully reclaiming a sane, orderly, and fair society from Marxist madness.
I write this report as someone with numerous, beloved gay friends and family in my life — almost none of whom would go anywhere near these perverse so-called Pride events. Before “tolerance” somehow blew up into an entire month+ of deviant revelry and inserted itself into grade school curricula, gay people went about their lives, with their passions representing a facet thereof — just like everyone else. Being gay did not represent the sum total of their personal identity, and it was certainly not a political stance. They were even free to marry people of the opposite sex and raise families, which some chose to do.
OF COURSE, corporations shouldn’t be funding exotic sexuality extravaganzas (especially for children and youth, for the love of God!) Imagine if they spent this much money and effort promoting wholesome, healthy families. Or go wild and imagine if they spent this kind of time and treasure evangelizing the word of Christ — the greatest faith in history, with a tangible record of bringing emotional health and overall wellbeing to its practitioners, be they gay, straight, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, American or foreign, old or young.
As a result of the corporate cash cuts, numerous Pride organizers say they are reconsidering their old financial model that was built on corporate donations and are instead turning to local support and fundraising. You know — just like every other civic or religious organization has to do. And in this, they may at last become as normal and mainstream as the veterans’ club or church down the street. Welcome to the real world, queer friends!
Let me repeat Luke Hartig's striking admission: Conservative scrutiny is really the top driver of change.
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