This Year, Pride Month Seems a Little… Quiet

By: Chris Johnson

Since the late 2000s, when “Pride Month” first began to gain influence on the greater culture, American consumers have become used to having their eyes and imaginations assaulted throughout the month of June. Ugly men in elaborate make-up, miserable looking women clearly trying to show excitement for their life’s choices, most tragically of all, the children they raise who will struggle to ever learn their own purpose or grasp their innate dignity, all draped in the rainbow flags and pride slogans. Corporations like Nike, Target, Skittles, Ford, Chevrolet, every professional sports league, and many, many, more have thumped Americans on the head with Pride displays, Pride commercials, Pride nights, Pride memorabilia.

Last June, this all came to a crescendo as Target literally made a deal with the devil – selling goods designed by a Satan worshipping artist. They also were caught selling “chest-binders” for young girls, and displaying “Pride Gear” for children right at the front entrance. The Los Angeles Dodgers partnered with a drag queen troupe whose schtick is mimicking nuns and are known for pole dancing on a crucifix, and Budweiser made its ill-fated marketing deal with now nearly-forgotten transgender TikTok “influencer,” Dylan Mulvaney.

Along with a high point of pro-Pride pressure on Americans just trying to live their lives, came a long overdue backlash from those fed up consumers: Target ended their partnership with the Satanist, discontinued selling the controversial garb, and moved their display to the back of the store. Budweiser faced the biggest backlash from their blue-collar worker fan base, as they literally struggled to give their beer away for months after their collaboration with Mulvaney.

Pride Month 2024 is just kicking off, but, compared to last year, it seems kind of… quiet. Corporations were clearly put on their toes last year, with the example Americans made of Budweiser. Target’s website has a Pride collection, but you have to scroll down about 5 times to find it, and there’s not much there. Walmart has had Pride displays in the past, but there’s nothing in our local store this year, and their website experience is similar to Target’s. Our local Meijer also doesn’t have a Pride display for the first time since they opened in 2021. One also has to scroll to the bottom of Kohl’s website to find their Pride collection. Even Nike, formerly one of the loudest corporate supporters of LGBT+ campaigns, has not released a Pride collection this year, nor even released a Pride post on Instagram.

MLB’s Pride Nights, unfortunately, are still to come, with only one team, the Texas Rangers, not participating.

While corporations seem to have begun to listen to their customers (and perhaps because of a removal of pressure by Larry Fink’s BlackRock), the agencies of our representative governments – local and federal – have not.

At the federal level, the Biden administration showed its hand when it eclipsed the Easter Holiday with Trans-Awareness Day. This month, it released another proclamation in support of the LGBTQIA+ lobby, and then each of the departments in his charge made sure the message is received loud and clear: this administration is pro-trans and everything else that goes with it. This is what they want you to think of as normal.

Departments in the executive branch, from the Department of the Navy to the Department of Agriculture, posted “Pride” propaganda to their social sites at the beginning of the month. Thankfully, Biden had to agree to a ban on flying the Pride flag from US embassies as a condition to passing a $1.2 billion spending package back in March, although he vowed to seek to appeal that part of the law.

Local municipalities are also making clear where they stand on the issue. While Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis blocked the lighting of the state’s bridges in rainbow colors for the month of June, the Florida city of St. Petersburg is expected to host the country’s largest Pride Parade later this month. This February, a man there was arrested for doing a burnout in his truck on a Pride flag painted on the road. This “hate crime” was committed and investigated again in Delray Beach, Florida that same month and then in Ft. Lauderdale in March. The “Proud” streets of Spokane, Washington, are the latest victim, which had its Pride mural “vandalized” by a burnout, was repainted, and then vandalized again within 24 hours.

What’s clear is that decades after being forced to recognized “Pride Month,” Americans aren’t getting any more used to the idea. If media coverage can be trusted as a metric, in fact, I’d say opposition is the highest it’s been in years – and it’s trending upwards.

If you are sick of LGBTQIA+ propaganda being pushed on you, as many of us are, take heart. You are not alone. Americans all around the country feel the same way about it that you do – and they’re starting to get feisty.

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