For Philly’s LGBTQ+ community, June is still a month to show our Pride — with or without sponsors
Here is what we now know about a significant portion of what passed for corporate allyship: it was never allyship. They are leaving now that it costs something, writes Jobert E. Abueva.
Pride has just started, and you can already feel what’s missing.
The rainbow logos that used to blanket June are fewer than usual. Companies that once lined up to sponsor Pride are quietly backing away. Organizers around the country are scrambling to make up the difference. The same brands pulling their dollars from parade floats are pulling them from LGBTQ+ media, too.
For a lot of outlets, June is the month that funds the whole year. This year, a lot of that money is not coming.
I have been contributing op-eds on Pride for the Inquirer since 2021. Each year, there’s been some new crisis. Egregious Supreme Court rulings. Unjust proposals from state legislatures. Banned books. DEI rollbacks. A federal administration that has made its position on LGBTQ+ lives unmistakably clear. I have called for defiance. I have called for marching. I have called for this community to be louder and prouder than ever.
This year, I want to say something a little different.
Corporations are reading the political weather and doing the math. The calculation is that the cost of flying the rainbow flag now exceeds the benefits. The backlash, they have decided, is louder than the community they claim to support. And so they are gone.
That is clarifying, if painful.
Here’s what we now know about a significant portion of what passed for corporate allyship: it was never allyship. It was brand management. It was market segmentation dressed up as solidarity. The logos came when it was safe and profitable to display them. They are leaving now that it costs something.
That is not allyship. That is sponsorship. There is a difference.
I am not here to be ungrateful for the dollars that funded events and media over the years. And I am thankful for those who will still burnish their brands during this year’s festivities. I am here to say that the community deserves an honest accounting of where it stands. And where it stands right now is somewhere clarifying. The fair-weather allies have revealed themselves. What remains is what was always real.
What remains is Philadelphia.
Philadelphia’s Pride Festival, which will be held this year on June 7, has never been just a party. It began with the first such protest in this city in 1965, before Stonewall. It has always been a fight. It was built by people who had nothing to lose because they had already lost so much. People who showed up anyway because showing up was the only answer that made sense.
That is still true. It is truer this year than it has been in a while.
The brands leaving are not taking the community with them. They are taking the easy version of support and leaving behind something more durable. The LGBTQ+ community and its genuine allies, the ones who show up not because it’s good for their quarterly numbers but because someone they love needs to see that they are not alone, are still here.
They will be on Walnut Street on June 7. They will be louder than any logo.
I have been out for decades. I have marched in good years and complicated ones. What I know from all of it is this: The community does not need corporate validation to know its own worth. It never did.
But it does need everyone who understands what’s at stake to recommit. Right now. Not because it is comfortable or profitable. Because rights are never guaranteed. Because every freedom won has been fought for, often through pain, sacrifice, and the courage of people who refused to be silent. Because complacency is a luxury none of us can afford.
June 7 is not just a festival. It’s a declaration. Show up for it.
We are here. We are loud. We will not disappear.
Jobert E. Abueva is the author of “Boy Wander: A Coming of Age Memoir” and “The Janus Plan: A No-Resolutions Path to Begin Your Year with Intention,” a Lambda Literary Prize recipient, and a resident of New Hope.
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