Pride Is Going Broke...and Maybe That’s a Good Thing

How corporate sponsorship hollowed out a movement, bailed when things got inconvenient, and left LGB people without a home

Something Strange is Happening to Pride

One by one, the corporate logos are disappearing. In San Francisco, organizers were blindsided when longtime sponsors like Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, and Diageo pulled out, leaving a $300,000 hole in the budget. In St. Louis, Pride launched a fundraiser to stay afloat after Anheuser-Busch ended its 30-year partnership. And they’re not alone — Washington, D.C. lost corporate backing for WorldPride, Denver saw a 62% drop in recurring sponsors, and even New York City is watching support quietly fade. The sudden collapse of funding has been chalked up to “anti-DEI backlash” or fears of political controversy — but those explanations barely scratch the surface.

The truth is harder to swallow: Pride sold its soul to corporate America, and now it’s paying the price.

Photo by Tanushree Rao on Unsplash

The Drug of Corporate Sponsorship

For years, Pride events became increasingly dependent on big-money sponsors. It felt like progress at the time. The rainbow logos, the floats from Fortune 500 companies, the HR departments competing to show how “inclusive” they were — surely that meant we’d made it, right?

But corporate sponsorship turned out to be a drug. The financial highs were great while they lasted, but the comedown is brutal. These companies were never in it for the community — they were in it for optics. For marketing. For the illusion of relevance. And now that the cultural winds are shifting— — around issues of gender ideology and children — those same sponsors are bailing, exposing just how hollow their so-called allyship really was.

What’s left is a movement that doesn’t know how to function without them.

Pride’s Mission Drift

Originally, Pride was a protest. A radical act of defiance. Stonewall wasn’t a block party — it was a riot led by people who were sick of being arrested for existing. Lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals marched to demand their rights in the face of brutal repression. Pride was supposed to honor that history and build a better future.

Instead, it’s become a parade of distractions.

Under the banner of LGBTQIA+, Pride has absorbed everything from gender identity politics to polyamorous kink collectives, often pushing the LGB community to the sidelines. Entire events are now branded as “family-friendly,” yet feature nudity, sexual fetish gear, and performances that are clearly adult in nature. Other spaces have been overtaken by the queer-identifying elite — polycules, wife-swapping activists, and people whose primary identity is sexual subversion.

This incoherence isn’t inclusive. It’s alienating. Pride is now trying to be everything to everyone — and in the process, it's become meaningless to the very people it was created for.

Trans Extremism Broke the Bank

The overcorrection didn’t stop with corporate branding. In recent years, Pride has bent itself around a fringe set of demands from the trans rights lobby, often at the expense of the LGB core. The focus shifted from protecting same-sex attracted people to affirming gender identities — any gender, any time, regardless of age, logic, or biological reality.

This pivot alienated many in the LGB community who have concerns about child medicalization, women’s rights, and the erasure of homosexuality. It also alienated the corporate sponsors. Companies that were fine slapping a rainbow on a vodka bottle aren’t so eager to be associated with double mastectomies on teenagers or drag queen story hours marketed to toddlers.

The financial collapse isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s happening because Pride lost the plot.

Excluding the Wrong People

What’s most galling is that while Pride allows groups with questionable and overtly sexual agendas to march front and center, organizations like Gays Against Groomers and the LGB Courage Coalition are being told to stay home. A gay man in South Carolina was reportedly denied access to a Pride event because he signed a child safeguarding petition. Meanwhile, entire contingents of queer anarchists promoting pornography and BDSM are given open invitations.

The distinction is clear. Same-sex attracted people: Lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals who raise concerns about the direction of the movement are now considered unwelcome — even “hateful” — while anyone waving a flag under the banner of “queerness” is embraced, no questions asked. This isn’t progress. It’s corruption.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are distinct. Same-sex attraction (LGB) is rooted in biological reality. Gender identity (TQI+) reflects personal expression and belief. Equating the two obscures the specific rights tied to same-sex relationships, undermining their hard-won protections.

Maybe It Needs to Break

This moment — this financial unraveling, this identity crisis—may be painful. But maybe it’s necessary.

Maybe Pride needs to go broke before it gets its soul back.

Maybe we need to start from scratch — without the logos, without the floats, without the corporations who only show up when it’s easy. Maybe it’s time for lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals to reclaim what was ours to begin with: a space to fight for our rights, to celebrate who we are, and to tell the truth about what we face.

Let the defense contractors walk. Let the beer companies sit this one out. Let the banks take their rainbow filters off. If they were only in it for the aesthetics, then they were never really with us in the first place.

Pride has lost its way — but we don’t have to.

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Call to Action

If you believe that lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals deserve a movement that reflects reality, not ideology, we invite you to stand with us.

Let’s rebuild something honest—together.