Michael Arceneaux, Guest Columnist

Less Corporate Pride Is an LGBTQ Opportunity

This is a moment for queer and trans people to embrace their history of challenging inequities.

June 11, 2025 at 11:30 AM UTC

Michael Arceneaux writes about pop culture, politics, race, sexuality, religion, class and gender. He is the author of "I Don’t Want To Die Poor" and "I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé."

You can’t take the element of protesting out of Pride.
Photographer: Jes Aznar/Getty Images AsiaPac

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Pride Month is well underway, but you might not notice it if you walked into major retail stores or scrolled through many corporate social media accounts. Instead of companies loudly showing support, rainbow-branded merchandise and logos have quietly disappeared. Corporations, it seems, have followed through on pledges to scale back their visible displays of allyship. An April report from Gravity Research, a risk management research firm, said that nearly 40% of companies planned to do so this year.

For longstanding critics of “rainbow capitalism,” a term referring to businesses that use imagery and language to appeal to LGBTQ shoppers like me, the decline in corporate support is unsurprising. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 68% of LGBTQ adults thought that all or most companies promoting Pride do so because they think it’s good for business.