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Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
I Am Beyond Thrilled That Corporations Are Defunding Pride. No, Not for the Reason You Think.
This is part of Slate's Pride 2025 package on how America is celebrating queerness during one of the most challenging years on record. I have never seen a group of gays as mad as the ones I met at Washington Pride in 2017. That year, I took part in a protest action that halted the annual parade. A hundred or more of us split into groups to block the passage of three separate marching contingents: the D.C. police department, for perpetrating violence against Black people; Lockheed Martin, for manufacturing weapons of war; and Wells Fargo, for lending money to the Dakota Access Pipeline. The thrust of the protest was simple. There isn't anything inherently queer or trans about these morally objectionable institutions, and they don't improve the lots of LGBTQ+ people in any meaningful way. Why should they get a place of honor at our party? My group filed into the street to block the Lockheed Martin delegation just as their float turned a corner on the parade route. We didn't know in advance what the Lockheed float would look like, and when I saw it, I gasped. Motoring down the street to thumping disco beats and applause from revelers in tutus and jockstraps were two large to-scale models of Lockheed products, a warplane and a drone. This tasteless, macabre display was great for the protest, I figured. There could not be a more vivid illustration of the discord between a celebration of human rights and a purveyor of instruments of death. I guess I thought the Pridegoers would greet us as liberators. That wasn't how it played out. While plenty of spectators cheered us on, many more brimmed with anger. They yelled and cried and spit at us. Trash and cups full of alcohol rained down on us from the apartment balconies above. One man positioned his face an inch from mine and screamed, 'You ruined Pride!' I've given that man a lot of thought in the years since. He was probably talking about the parade as a whole, which was delayed and rerouted by our blockades, and not about our infringement of his right to clap for Lockheed Martin in particular. But to me, they were one and the same, because the D.C. Pride parade was bloated with soulless corporate activations. So while I felt genuine guilt for raining on that man's Pride parade, his words drove home just how differently we saw Pride. If I could ruin his Pride just by pressing pause on an hourslong commercial for goods and services, what did Pride mean to him? This year, as companies pull their sponsorships from major metropolitan Prides in deference to the rising anti-LGBTQ+ movement, the time is ripe to reconsider what Pride has become and what we want it to be. For decades, heavy corporate involvement in Pride events has been a given—welcomed by many, ignored by some, protested by a few. If this year's trend continues, Pride as we know it will drastically change. And that would be a good thing: Even if corporations come crawling back once President Pete Buttigieg clinches the White House in 2028, big-city Pride organizers should rebuff them, in favor of the homegrown celebrations of LGBTQ+ culture and resistance we all deserve. The slowdown of corporate Pride began a few years ago, when right-wing advocates pressured the likes of Target, Starbucks, and Budweiser to back off their LGBTQ+ marketing campaigns. Companies started doing fewer thirsty Pride stunts, like redesigning their social media avatars in rainbow for the month of June. This year, the exodus ramped up. In one survey of 49 executives at Fortune 1000 companies, nearly 40 percent said their businesses planned to dial back their engagement with Pride month this year, either internally or externally. Only 9 percent said the same last year. Pride event sponsorships are a major part of the drop-off. In cities across the country, companies that once gave tens of thousands of dollars or more to individual Pride celebrations have now declined to contribute. San Francisco said goodbye to Anheuser-Busch and Comcast. New York is missing Citi and PepsiCo. D.C. is getting no love from Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, Visa, or Mastercard. These are just a few examples among many, which add up to a multimillion-dollar slump in Pride event funding nationwide. A spokesperson for the United States Association of Prides told reporter Nico Lang that donations to some smaller Prides have dropped 70 to 90 percent. Pride organizers are bemoaning the loss, suggesting they may need to drastically downsize next year's celebrations. It's often said that the first Pride was a riot, because Pride celebrations started out to commemorate the June 1969 Stonewall uprising. But Pride soon became a business proposition. In the late 1970s, less than a decade after Stonewall, activists in San Francisco were already launching an effort to take over what was then called Gay Freedom Day and make it more political, because they that believed local business owners had turned it into a glorified bar crawl. But corporate Pride as we know it today is a more recent invention. Major Prides now rely on big-ticket sponsorships to execute events on a scale and level of professionalism that the first organizers could have never imagined. Today's Prides often comprise a city's largest and most elaborate parade, a festival with multiple stages, a weekend packed with parties, and sophisticated marketing and logistics support. These things cost a lot of money, and corporate sponsors foot the bill in exchange for advertising. We get a bigger party. They get to make nice with potential queer employees and build goodwill among a demographic with robust spending power. Many Pridegoers see this as a fair trade. For some, it feels like even more than that. It's flattering, in a way, to see mainstream brands—the popular clique of American capitalism—beg for our business with rainbow logos and pro-gay slogans. (I still respect the $5 gift card Chipotle gave me at one Pride, which read 'Homo Estás' above a rainbow burrito, essentially outing me when I used it.) If you came of age when gay sex was criminalized and certain professions were unavailable to out queers, seeing big-name brands don your colors for a week could make you feel as if you'd made it, as if you're a fully integrated part of the American project. It could even feel healing to get a nod of recognition from the businesses that take our money and employ our friends. At the very least, it felt like progress. And it was, in a sense. Companies are risk-averse, so they follow the zeitgeist, reflecting changing public views on homosexuality and other social issues. When they adopted corporate Pride, it was likely because their risk-benefit analyses told them that they'd earn more by embracing gays than by ignoring them. That's why they're pulling out of Pride now, to curry favor with Donald Trump and appease a general public that is growing more hostile to LGBTQ+ rights. But the equating of corporate involvement with progress is a trap, because it lends a false sense of permanence to political changes that can be fleeting. If we expected our comrades at Anheuser-Busch and Comcast to have our backs when the going got rough, even if only to keep our business, we were sorely mistaken. 'We need our business allies,' argued a 2022 Washington Blade op-ed in defense of corporate Pride, illustrated with a photo of the Amazon float in the D.C. Pride parade. Two years later, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos quashed the Washington Post's endorsement of Kamala Harris, contorted the paper's opinion section to favor Trump, and got a front-row seat to the president's inauguration, to which Amazon donated $1 million. Business ally indeed. That's not the only pitfall to inviting corporations to our parties. Celebrating them alongside LGBTQ+ activists, nonprofits, and advocacy groups runs the risk of 'pinkwashing,' or papering over major misdeeds with feel-good gestures of support for LGBTQ+ people. (In 2017, as Facebook facilitated a genocide in Myanmar, it released a rainbow Pride 'reaction'—but only in cities deemed to be queer-friendly—then showed off at Prides all June.) And, though it might sound petty, company Pride contingents simply don't feel as if they belong. Credit card companies and consulting firms are culturally and aesthetically irrelevant to Pride events, because they do not pertain to the actual subject matter of Pride: the art, history, sex, politics, and social bonds of queer life. The proliferation of corporations at Pride has opened the door to another entity that has watered down Pride's purpose: straight people. Every Pride, at parades across the country, thousands of queer people who suffer actual trans- and homophobia line the streets to applaud marching cohorts of heterosexual, cisgender people, who do not. Why? Because companies often encourage self-appointed allies to join their queer colleagues in the parade. I've heard of straight people spearheading their companies' Pride floats. Crowds of queer people cheering for rainbow-clad straight people on a day meant to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community—it's as dissonant as sending a model of a drone down the parade route, and it's a sign of how far Pride has drifted from its origins as a show of queer visibility and power. We compromise our self-worth when we lavish praise on straight people and corporations on the one weekend of the year that's ours, simply because they don't profess to hate us. The upshot is that, today, Prides have become too big to fail. Inflated by corporate dollars, they have conditioned urban gays to expect massive, polished productions with celebrity guests and sponsor-branded freebies. Anything less will feel like a letdown—like a 'ruined' Pride. But what Pride is today is not the only thing it can be. Some cities are already reimagining their fundraising models. Cincinnati Pride opted this year to forgo sponsorships from companies that canceled their DEI programs, making up the difference with a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign. Pride organizers in Springfield, Missouri, are courting donations from local independent businesses, like a cannabis dispensary, a boutique hotel, and an 'at-home pet euthanasia service.' In small towns and cities in conservative areas, where new Pride events are springing up and thriving, volunteers make do with ragtag fundraisers, mom-and-pop sponsorships, and right-sized ambitions. The corporate exodus that has sent Pride organizers scrambling for alternative funding sources could be a blessing in disguise, paving the way for more meaningful celebrations. Instead of a four-hour parade for multinational companies, we could have a two-hour parade for community groups, queer businesses, and the local gay baton-twirling club. Instead of spending tens of thousands of Booz Allen Hamilton dollars to hire a heterosexual A-list musical performer for a generic outdoor concert, we could focus on local queer bands, comedians, and DJs. It's time to take better advantage of untapped community spending power: I'd gladly pay $25 to enter a sliding-scale Pride festival if it meant others could attend for free, the drag artists got paid, and Raytheon got no advertising space. Queers in big cities are already hosting massive events with minimal operating costs and no sponsors. They're called Dyke Marches, and they run on volunteer labor, community fundraising, and a lot of nerve. At the annual New York City march, with no permit for their event, marshals block traffic by linking arms across intersections for nearly 2 miles. Tens of thousands of people march the route—waving signs, playing music, running into friends and future friends, exes and future exes. There are children, and there are leather harnesses, and no one cares that they're in the same place. The spectacle—a sea of blissed-out queers blazing down Fifth Avenue, seizing control of the street without anyone's permission—embodies the purest essence of Pride. None of it has been sold off to advertisers. If I had to pinpoint the purpose of Pride, it would be not a specific event or political ambition but a feeling. You find it in those transcendent Pride moments when you're surrounded by a mix of loved ones and strangers, sensing that everyone around you is linked by a mutual history, touching the possibility of a future that gives our freest, most joyous selves adequate space to grow. There are those of us who get that feeling on a sweaty dance floor, at a lesbian photography showcase, or watching young trans people take giddy selfies in their favorite outfits. Others get it at big-budget parades and concerts. But I'm willing to bet that if you stripped away all the commercial elements of Pride, the parade and concert people would still be able to capture that feeling. A more modest, homespun celebration would give us everything we need without commodifying our movement for the benefit of fair-weather friends. There is a long legacy of trans and queer people making unimaginably beautiful, world-changing things from whatever scraps they could get their hands on. It's time we claimed it.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Buttigieg's 2020 Iowa political director launches bid for governor
The Iowa political director of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign Julie Stauch announced Tuesday she is running for Iowa governor. The launch sets up a Democratic primary contest between Stauch and Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand, who launched his bid last month. Stauch made the announcement on her campaign website, where she also posted a cover letter and resume. Stauch noted her experience working as the president of her own firm, as well as her roles as chief public affairs officer and vice president of governmental affairs of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. 'Iowans are disgusted with our elected leaders, and we want change. We are done with the destruction created by a Governor and Legislators who are destroying every aspect of our state, playing childish games with people's lives. We value our water, our soil, our children's futures, our schools, our communities, and our County Governments. We need leaders who embrace those values. I am one of those leaders,' Staunch said in a statement. Stauch is the latest candidate to jump into the state's governor's race following Gov. Kim Reynold's (R) announcement last month that she would not seek reelection. In addition to Sand running in the Democratic primary, Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) and former Iowa state Rep. Brad Sherman (R) are running in the GOP primary. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird (R) is also considering a bid. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as 'lean Republican.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
7 days ago
- General
- The Hill
Buttigieg's 2020 Iowa political director launches bid for governor
The Iowa political director of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign Julie Stauch announced Tuesday she is running for Iowa governor. The launch sets up a Democratic primary contest between Stauch and Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand, who launched his bid last month. Stauch made the announcement on her campaign website, where she also posted a cover letter and resume. Stauch noted her past experience working as the president of her own firm, as well as her roles as chief public affairs officer and vice president of governmental affairs of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. 'Iowans are disgusted with our elected leaders, and we want change. We are done with the destruction created by a Governor and Legislators who are destroying every aspect of our state, playing childish games with people's lives. We value our water, our soil, our children's futures, our schools, our communities, and our County Governments. We need leaders who embrace those values. I am one of those leaders,' Staunch said in a statement. Stauch is the latest candidate to jump into the state's governor's race following Gov. Kim Reynold's (R) announcement last month that she would not seek reelection. In addition to Sand running in the Democratic primary, Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) and former Iowa state Rep. Brad Sherman (R) are running in the GOP primary. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird (R) is also considering a bid. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as 'lean Republican.'
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Opinion - Presidential health cover-ups are as American as apple pie
That rumbling noise coming out of Washington is the sound of other shoes dropping in the saga of the Amazing Shrinking Biden Presidency with the release of 'Original Sin' — the latest in what will likely be a series of behind-the-scenes tell-alls about the former president's cognitive and physical decline in office and the high-level efforts to cover it up. Adding fuel to the fire are interviews with former aides, party operatives and financial donors who now find it politically safe to say that in meeting Biden they were shocked — shocked! — by his sad condition. Even his ever-cautious Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who regularly dismissed questions about Biden's mental capacity, now concedes that 'maybe' it wasn't a good idea for him to run for reelection. But the sad fact is that presidential medical cover-ups are almost as old as the republic. Many of American leaders have suffered potentially crippling health problems that could have incapacitated them in a crisis. To one extent or another, they were kept from the public. Abraham Lincoln fell into black moods that today would be diagnosed as depression. Ulysses S. Grant struggled with alcoholism. Under the pretext of a fishing trip, Grover Cleveland was secretly operated on for cancer of the jaw while cruising on a friend's yacht. Warren G. Harding entered the White House with the serious heart condition that killed him mid-term. Dwight Eisenhower also had cardiac problems and suffered several heart attacks in office and a stroke, which his aides downplayed despite his slurred speech. Polio confined Franklin D. Roosevelt to a wheelchair that journalists were barred from photographing with him in it. Despite serious deterioration of his health, Roosevelt ran for and was elected to an unprecedented fourth term, then suffered an apparent stroke in 1945 before attending the crucial Yalta Conference to set plans for the end of World War II. Another stroke killed him later that year. John F. Kennedy suffered debilitating Addison's Disease and also received strong painkillers for an old back injury. Ronald Reagan's advancing Alzheimer's is widely seen as contributing to the Iran-Contra scandal. Most analogous to the Biden cover-up is the stroke that paralyzed and incapacitated Woodrow Wilson. He was treated more or less in secret and seen only by an aide, his doctors and wife. To continue the charade, Edith Wilson acted as the de facto president for more than a year, issuing policy statements and executive decisions in his name and forging his signature on bills passed by Congress. Lawmakers, his Cabinet and the public were kept in the dark. Nikki Haley addressed a core concern in this as a Republican primary hopeful early last year, calling for mandatory 'mental competency tests' for politicians older than 75. 'This is especially important for senior officials making decisions that can impact public safety and well-being,' she said. The plan was dismissed as an attack on a doddering Biden, but it's a good idea. If conducted in an independent manner, such tests would go far to address public concerns that inevitably will follow revelations of Biden's closely guarded deteriorating condition. But it shouldn't stop there. Given the record of the potentially crippling health problems American presidents have suffered, full medical reports should be required as well. Many but not all candidates now release the findings of physical checkups conducted by their own physicians, and the reports are invariably sunny. Biden's 2024 checkup noted only some acid reflux and a problem with sleep apnea, making no mention of the prostate cancer he recently disclosed. One way to do this would be to condition the receipt of federal campaign matching funds on presidential and vice presidential candidates submitting their comprehensive medical information to an independent, apolitical group that would share conditions that raise alarm with the public. Candidates for the presidency should expect to surrender some personal privacy. Given the high stakes, their potentially debilitating health problems should be disclosed sooner, rather than when it's too late. Winston Wood was Washington news editor of the Wall Street Journal and explained U.S. foreign policy to audiences overseas on Voice of America. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
7 days ago
- General
- The Hill
Presidential health cover-ups are as American as apple pie
That rumbling noise coming out of Washington is the sound of other shoes dropping in the saga of the Amazing Shrinking Biden Presidency with the release of 'Original Sin' — the latest in what will likely be a series of behind-the-scenes tell-alls about the former president's cognitive and physical decline in office and the high-level efforts to cover it up. Adding fuel to the fire are interviews with former aides, party operatives and financial donors who now find it politically safe to say that in meeting Biden they were shocked — shocked! — by his sad condition. Even his ever-cautious Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who regularly dismissed questions about Biden's mental capacity, now concedes that 'maybe' it wasn't a good idea for him to run for reelection. But the sad fact is that presidential medical cover-ups are almost as old as the republic. Many of American leaders have suffered potentially crippling health problems that could have incapacitated them in a crisis. To one extent or another, they were kept from the public. Abraham Lincoln fell into black moods that today would be diagnosed as depression. Ulysses S. Grant struggled with alcoholism. Under the pretext of a fishing trip, Grover Cleveland was secretly operated on for cancer of the jaw while cruising on a friend's yacht. Warren G. Harding entered the White House with the serious heart condition that killed him mid-term. Dwight Eisenhower also had cardiac problems and suffered several heart attacks in office and a stroke, which his aides downplayed despite his slurred speech. Polio confined Franklin D. Roosevelt to a wheelchair that journalists were barred from photographing with him in it. Despite serious deterioration of his health, Roosevelt ran for and was elected to an unprecedented fourth term, then suffered an apparent stroke in 1945 before attending the crucial Yalta Conference to set plans for the end of World War II. Another stroke killed him later that year. John F. Kennedy suffered debilitating Addison's Disease and also received strong painkillers for an old back injury. Ronald Reagan's advancing Alzheimer's is widely seen as contributing to the Iran-Contra scandal. Most analogous to the Biden cover-up is the stroke that paralyzed and incapacitated Woodrow Wilson. He was treated more or less in secret and seen only by an aide, his doctors and wife. To continue the charade, Edith Wilson acted as the de facto president for more than a year, issuing policy statements and executive decisions in his name and forging his signature on bills passed by Congress. Lawmakers, his Cabinet and the public were kept in the dark. Nikki Haley addressed a core concern in this as a Republican primary hopeful early last year, calling for mandatory 'mental competency tests' for politicians older than 75. 'This is especially important for senior officials making decisions that can impact public safety and well-being,' she said. The plan was dismissed as an attack on a doddering Biden, but it's a good idea. If conducted in an independent manner, such tests would go far to address public concerns that inevitably will follow revelations of Biden's closely guarded deteriorating condition. But it shouldn't stop there. Given the record of the potentially crippling health problems American presidents have suffered, full medical reports should be required as well. Many but not all candidates now release the findings of physical checkups conducted by their own physicians, and the reports are invariably sunny. Biden's 2024 checkup noted only some acid reflux and a problem with sleep apnea, making no mention of the prostate cancer he recently disclosed. One way to do this would be to condition the receipt of federal campaign matching funds on presidential and vice presidential candidates submitting their comprehensive medical information to an independent, apolitical group that would share conditions that raise alarm with the public. Candidates for the presidency should expect to surrender some personal privacy. Given the high stakes, their potentially debilitating health problems should be disclosed sooner, rather than when it's too late. Winston Wood was Washington news editor of the Wall Street Journal and explained U.S. foreign policy to audiences overseas on Voice of America.
