It's a dicey time for Pride organizations, and while fingers are being pointed at Trump, cowardly corporations, and while both definitely had a hand in the losso funding they're experiencing, it's hardly the whole story.
The call — as they say — is coming from inside the house.
To give you some background, last week I reported how San Francisco Pride lost some very important corporate sponsors, leaving it with a deficit of over a milliion dollars:
According to San Francisco local news station, KRON4, various corporate sponsors have pulled out of the 2025 Pride celebration, creating a funding gap of over a million dollars. These sponsors include Comcast, Anheuser-Busch (looks like they got the message), Benefit Cosmetics, and Diageo, creating a $1.3 million deficit.
(READ: San Francisco Pride Gets a Massive Cut to Its Budget After Corporations Decide They Had Enough)
As my colleague, Becky Noble, reported on Wednesday, more Pride organizations have seen their funding withdrawn as well:
Twin Cities Pride, meanwhile, is facing a $200,000 funding deficit. Executive director Andi Otto stated that several longstanding sponsors were not returning calls and emails, and management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton has pulled out entirely of Washington D.C.'s World Pride Event. Other Pride organizations in Milwaukee and Norfolk, Virginia, have also seen scaled-back support from companies who have been supporters in the past.
This even extends to Toronto Pride, which is looking down the barrel of its own $300,000 shortfall.
Noble points out that corporations are pulling out so as not to face the wrath of the Trump administration, which promised severe consequences for any company practicing the discriminatory DEI policies. This is largely correct, but what you may notice is that there's not exactly a lot of fight coming from the LGBT community over it.
Or more accurately, the LGB community.
There has been a rift forming in the LGBT community, with the first three letters becoming disillusioned with the fourth. In 2022, a movement within the community to kick the T out of the group began in earnest, and as time went on and the T got more extreme, that sentiment only grew.
That rift had grown into a gulf, with gays and lesbians (particularly lesbians) becoming borderline hostile with the transgender community. Like every other woman's spaces, men identifying as women would show up at lesbian hangouts and demand sexual gratification, often pressuring or intimidating lesbians when they wouldn't give it to them.
Groups within the LGBT community began popping up to actively resist the transgender community, such as "gays against groomers" and the "LGB alliance."
By 2024, former activists were expressing regret for their part in empowering the transgender community, noting that their aim for a live and let live lifestyle gave birth to an entitled group of gender-confused people who melt down at the slightest inconvenience.
(READ: The Division Within the LGBT Community Continues to Grow)
Polling data is unsurprisingly limited in terms of how gays and lesbians feel about the transgender community, but if I had to guess, many gays and lesbians no longer feel the need to associate with the activist group that claims to represent them, especially since many of these groups have focused so hard on the transgender aspect of the LGBT community.
Many still have the "live and let live" mentality and now that they pretty much have it, it seems a safe bet that many are just done with the game. I'm not seeing a ton of activist chatter from gays and lesbians. A lot of it seems to be coming from transgender advocacy groups, still wearing terms like "gay and lesbian" in their names.
And to be honest, I have no problem with gays and lesbians living their own lives. Keeping their own lives to themselves and not forcing anyone to celebrate or take notice is perfectly fine. Many are just normal people who want to be identified as a lot of things before gay or lesbian, such as friend, sister, brother, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc., and not be defined by whom they're attracted to.
Just like everyone else, the transgender community seems to want to force gays and lesbians into accepting their version of reality to the point where they must even adhere to it in their own relationships. They demand total obedience from them just as much as everyone else, if not more so.
I'm not surprised the gay and lesbian community isn't showing up in force like they would in years past to make sure they got their way. The transgender activists have made many of them just as disenchanted as we are.
