Commentary​
Pride Month, formerly known as June, began this year with the usual glut of rainbow flags, parades, school assemblies, and government and corporate cheerleading of LGBTQ identities in America’s blue cities and states.
But then, as the days passed, something happened. As June has rolled on, it’s increasingly looking as though Pride celebrations aren’t quite as popular as their backers had wanted them to be. In fact, there has been a significant and growing amount of open dissent to the omnipresent Pride hoopla.
It started with the sales collapse—still ongoing—of Bud Light, displaced from its position as America’s No. 1-selling beer and generating a $27 billion share-price crash for its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, after the brand’s marketers decided to highlight transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. A similar sales freefall and stock-price plunge has befallen Target, which in late May began marketing a line of Pride-themed clothing for adults and children to be prominently displayed at the front of Target stores. The most controversial item was a “tuck-friendly” transgender swimsuit designed for hiding male genitals. Although the swimsuit came only in standard adult sizes, displaying it among items specifically marketed to children—including a kid-size swim skirt tagged as fitting “multiple … gender expressions”—provoked boycotts so severe that managers at many Target outlets either moved the Pride-theme merchandise to the back of the store or removed it altogether….