For several years, I worked across from a downtown park in a large city, and one Saturday in June for a few hours, it hosted the annual Gay Pride parade.
Now, the United States is halfway through 30 long days of supercilious rainbow-logo hype and banal statements from big businesses, all in honor of so-called Pride Month.
Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden issued a meaningless proclamation asking all Americans to “wave their flags of pride high.” (Does he realize much of his party finds the rainbow flag less controversial than the American flag?)
I suppose this lunacy could be a sign of the progress — and some partisan politics — we’ve made toward acceptance of gay people, but the virtue-signaling is irksome, because it’s so vacuous and, more seriously, hypocritical.
Countless organizations changed their logos to rainbow graphics on their social media accounts. Yet, in a revealing omission, they usually will not do this in places where homosexuality is either illegal or denounced, to put it mildly.
Silicon Valley-based LinkedIn quickly mounted a Pride Month message on its U.S. Twitter account June 1, but nothing similar headlines its India account.
Insufferable Starbucks shows their “pride” on Twitter here, but tellingly does not mention it on its UAE or Brunei profile.
Why do the gay-friendly designs only occur in tolerant, western locations where the messages are wholly unnecessary?
Those two examples are relatively innocuous compared to the usual duplicitous corporations, who angrily lecture Americans on the LGBT agenda while happily erasing gay content to assuage authoritarian governments.
Among the worst is Disney. The corporation bullies anyone it considers insufficiently woke on these issues; however, Disney censors gay content in movies shown in countries where homosexuality is frowned upon.
So Disney’s “pride” disappears when it could affect their product in a retrograde market? They remain a left-wing embarrassment.
Apple is another disingenuous offender — and dangerously so. The multinational giant is famously pro-gay here in the U.S., yet audaciously colludes with totalitarian governments to censor LGBT-related apps. Celebrate your “pride” here; oppress it abroad. Poorly played as usual, Apple.
I’m not Bernie Sanders, so I understand why companies pursue the interests of shareholders and make calculated business decisions abroad. But they surely shouldn’t simultaneously claim to be progressive heroes, pursuing social justice over money. It’s a shameful lie that may work in a cosmopolitan bubble, but to clear-thinking folks, it’s dishonest and insulting.
Corporate America undermines this cause when it cheapens June to transparently hypocritical business decisions. They take no risks and help no one.
There are still 71 countries where homosexuality is illegal, and in a dozen of those, it is punishable by death. When will Apple, Disney, Hollywood, cable channels, clothing stores, and professional sports take a stand there?
The scholar Douglas Murray, who is gay, finds the spectacle embarrassing, perfectly summarizing that a sexual preference is nothing to be ashamed or proud of in 2022, concluding that, “Being gay is a morally neutral fact. Neither pride nor shame. Just being. Like everybody else.”
If only woke corporations and agenda-driven politicians could understand such simplicity.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
