Hay kids! What month is it?
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Pride’s a sin where I grew up…
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Rainbow capitalism
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You will be amazed at how many big U.S. and multinational corporations who are enthusiastically celebrating “Pride Month” have significant operations in countries that criminalize homosexuality. It’s not just China and Saudi Arabia, and it’s not just manufacturing in countries such as Pakistan or Indonesia. No, you’re going to be flabbergasted by which particularly controversial company at this moment has operations running in . . . Uganda, which just enacted what are probably the most anti-gay criminal laws on the planet. Corporate America gets to market to LGBT consumers stateside, and then turn around and make a bundle in some of the most anti-gay countries in the world, and apparently everyone is just fine with this systemic hypocrisy.
You don’t have to look too far to find social or cultural conservatives who dislike or even seethe about “Pride Month,” as many chain stores suddenly put up giant rainbows in every display and window. It’s a free country, and you can feel about this phenomenon any way you like. But I’d argue that the most compelling objection to corporate America’s Pride Month is that it represents big companies’ support for the rights of gays in the cheapest and most consequence-free way possible.
For several years now, sharp-eyed observers have noticed that many multinational corporations add rainbows to their logos in the West, but keep them unchanged in the Middle East, where governments and the populaces are much less supportive of gay rights.
Big multinational corporations love standing up for gay rights, as long as it means more people buying their stuff. They are not interested in standing up for gay rights if it might cost them something.
Big American companies will throw their weight around in opposition to all kinds of state laws, from restrictions on explicit materials in school libraries to limitations on hormone treatments, but then turn around and avert their eyes from governments that literally execute people for being gay.
Disney objects to Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law. The company also has no problem staging “Disney on Ice” in Saudi Arabia. Not that long ago, a Saudi court sentenced a man to 450 lashes for “setting up a Twitter account to promote and practice homosexuality.”
What this demonstrates is that vast swaths of corporate America have no fundamental, principled objection to violent anti-gay views, as long as the profits are high enough. Apparently, c-suite executives’ real objection to the American opponents of gay rights is that they aren’t a sufficiently lucrative market.
And in this light, the gay and lesbian communities of the West look gullible, not triumphant.
Slapping a rainbow on the corporate logo on the website is the minimal-effort way to “support” the protection of the rights of gays and lesbians. It takes, what, five minutes for the graphics and website teams to do that? How much time and effort does it take for any clothing brand to put “PRIDE” on its shirts? How many of those “PRIDE” garments are actually created, sourced, assembled, or distributed in countries where it is illegal to have pride in being gay or lesbian?
