100%

I was grocery shopping the other day and over the loudspeaker came… Welcome to (The store’s name.) Pride savings and they listed items that were on sale for Pride month. Later over the loudspeaker they announced pizza and ice cream for the employees for Pride month.

Have you noticed more places are celebrating Pride month which is nice but…

More and more businesses are getting a 100% from the Human Rights Campaign but…

Pride merch won’t save trans youth
If corporations want to support LGBTQ people, they should fight against the wave of anti-trans bills, advocates say.
Vox
By Katelyn Burns
June 25, 2021

Amen I say! Amen.

Just before the start of Pride Month, Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, began selling a wide variety of rainbow-themed merchandise. A perusal of the company’s website reveals hundreds of such items for sale, like a Queer Eye-branded clothing line and tie-ins from rainbow-themed brands like Skittles and the Kellogg Company. You can even buy a shirt that reads: “I can’t even think straight.”

Walmart earned a perfect 100 percent rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s 2021 Corporate Equality Index, which scores companies based on their support of LGBTQ employees through HR policies, practices, and benefits, as well as their public advocacy. Earlier this year, when Arkansas — Walmart’s home state and the location of its global headquarters — banned both gender-affirming medical care for young people and the participation of trans girls and women in school sports, the CEO of the retail giant issued a statement calling the legislation “troubling.”

How can they have a 100% if their headquarters is a state that doesn’t protect LGBTQ+ people? How can they be a 100% when they have factories where a trans youth cannot get proper medical care?

Two years ago, when Bostock v. Clayton County was being heard by the Supreme Court, more than 200 companies — from Disney to Ernst & Young — cosigned an amicus brief calling for employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity to be made illegal. The Texas Chamber of Commerce was instrumental in keeping the conservative-controlled state legislature from instituting a bathroom bill. And in 2016, large corporations such as PayPal, alongside the NCAA and the NBA, were credited with the eventual rollback of North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ bill, HB 2, after widespread backlash to the law cost the state around $3.7 billion over 12 years, per Associated Press estimates.

But many other companies donate to politicians who are anti-LGBTQ. Do you remember that companies stopped campaign donates to 22 politicians who voted against against certifying the election on January 6 well most of the companies went back to donating to their campaign once the dust settled.

But now businesses see that there is money to be made from us. Have you noticed that big LGBTQ+ centers have huge Pride events? How do they pay for them? Well with corporate sponsors, from the very same companies that back anti-LGBTQ+ legislators. Companies that are moving to states that are anti-LGBTQ+.

Over the past 20 years, Pride merchandise has become a big business, presenting a multimillion-dollar opportunity for corporations. The long list of absurd Pride-themed products, from a drag queen Chipotle menu to the gaudy monstrosity that is the Target short suit, stretches the imagination.

It’s also become a rite of passage every June for corporations in the US and Western Europe to change their social media logos and other branding to a rainbow theme. Corporations have become staples at local Pride parades, with even the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin running a parade float.

There is a bill trying to pass Congress called the Equality Act, look around and see how many companies are supporting the Act? Those are the worthy companies to sponsor Pride events. What companies opposed the North Carolina’s anti-trans law? Those are the companies worthy to sponsor Pride events.

He pointed to a letter signed earlier this year by 137 companies, including Amazon and numerous airlines, generally opposing anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans legislation, but the corporate world largely has not gone beyond that. In 2016, for example, boycotts were instrumental in overturning North Carolina’s HB 2, and such forceful action could be effective once again. “We wanted direct engagement from companies in individual states,” he said. “It was crickets.”

I do not want to hear crickets from LGBTQ+ centers as they look corporate sponsors, I want them to look companies that support LGBTQ+ legislation, companies that do not donate to anti-LGBTQ legislators.

Companies that don’t speak out against the anti-trans legislation should lose their 100% ratings from the HRC.

There is a place for the big flashy Pride events but the organizers have to be cognizant of their corporate sponsors and not accept money being thrown at them by companies playing both sides of the street.

Yesterday, I went to a Pride picnic that was organized by the mothers of LGBTQ+ children. They didn’t have flashy sponsors, they didn’t have a pub crawl, they didn't have Drag shows by television celebrities, they didn’t have fancy floats, all they had were kids playing touch football. Flying kites. Playing games while the parents sat around and talked.

More and more parents, churches, and towns around the state are not have big Pride days but rather parents sponsored events and that is how it should be. Pride sponsored by love.