So-called “Pride Month” this year was … not so much.
I noted last July that corporate support for DEI was already in decline. That was largely due to backlash from some woke corporate marketing campaigns in 2023 pandering to the gender-confusion cult, particularly the so-called “transgender” crowd who clearly exhibit gender pathology.
Retailer Target and Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light beer brand suffered substantial losses as a result of their ill-advised campaigns, and other companies have gotten the message. Consequently, a growing list of major corporations and organizations were dialing back their virtue-signal pandering.
In early June, Emmy Griffin wrote, “Both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported that numerous corporate sponsors have pulled out, scaled back, or otherwise opted to be silent supporters of Pride Month 2025 activities.”
As Nate Jackson concluded: “Maybe it’s a reaction to the overreach of leftist culture warriors foisting ‘pride’ on everyone through increasingly lewd public displays, often billed as ostensibly ‘family friendly.’ Maybe it’s simply that more people are figuring out that Pride Month is gross. … Pride Month 2025 has been more muted than in years past.”
Yes, the Rainbow Mafia is still after famed author J.K. Rowling for taking a position in defense of women against those who pretend to be women.
And yes, there is still a pretender in Congress, Tim “Sarah” McBride, walking around in a dress.
But the month ended on a high note and with a harbinger for men invading women’s sports.
The University of Pennsylvania wisely submitted to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning males from competing in women’s sports. Notably, UPenn was the school where a man, William “Lia” Thomas, was allowed to compete on the women’s swimming team, breaking numerous women’s swimming school records and winning the 2022 national championship in the 500-yard freestyle.
The Ivy League school reached its decision as part of an agreement to settle a federal civil rights case raised by the Department of Education over UPenn’s failure to uphold Title IX protections for women’s sports. The agreement also includes UPenn sending personalized apology letters to each swimmer impacted by having to compete against Thomas, in which the school admits it was wrong in allowing a male to compete in female categories.
One reason for the slide in corporate and public support for the gender pathology page of the Left’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agenda is that the ugliness of that agenda is being exposed for what it really is. Astoundingly, Democrats and their homosexual constituencies are still promoting their deviant “degenderization” agenda, including so-called “gender-affirming” surgery (a.k.a. gender mutilation surgery) on ever-younger adolescents.
And that brings me to an article by a high-profile fitness and media personality, Jillian Michaels, titled “Why I, a gay woman, can’t celebrate Pride Month now that it’s been hijacked by leather daddies, drag shows and corporate stunts.”
Michaels writes: “I’ve never been ‘proud’ to be gay. … Pride Month has ballooned into a 30-day spectacle that now feels less about unity and more about domination — cultural, corporate, and political. … Let’s be honest… We’re not fighting for survival. We’re fighting for relevance — and it shows. Pride Month today has become a lightning rod, not because gay people are asking to be treated equally, but because the month has become synonymous with shock value, sexual exhibitionism, and corporate hypocrisy.”
She continues: “We’ve all seen the footage. Leather daddies in assless chaps simulating sex acts in public. Drag queens twerking in thongs in front of children. Parades that look more like adult fetish conventions than civil rights celebrations. … We’re told Pride is about ‘inclusion,’ but increasingly it feels like a middle finger to anyone who doesn’t co-sign every fringe performance or ideology. If you so much as raise an eyebrow at what’s happening on your city’s main street, you’re labeled a bigot, even if you’re gay yourself. You don’t have to be a conservative Christian mom to think that maybe the Pride movement has lost the plot.”
She concludes: “So let’s stop building walls out of rainbows and start building bridges. Real pride doesn’t need a stage, a sponsor, or a spotlight. It doesn’t demand applause. It is lived — quietly, confidently, unapologetically. Every single day.”
That was bold, and like Rowling, I suspect she will now be subject to endless hateful efforts to cancel her voice, though she is already a target for disclosing that she voted for Trump in 2024.
