Happy Pride.
Its expensive to put together large celebrations, and the LGBT+ communities need corporate support to cover expenses like bonding, underwriting, insurance, etc.
That said, celebrating the diversity and achievements of the LGBT+ communities needs to go a lot further than slapping a rainbow around your company logo.
Are your LGBT+ employees supported, listened to, and when they advise you that your products are harmful to our communities, are you taking immediate action, or telling us to “be patient. This takes time…?
…and years pass and you are saying the same thing? Still inactive? Policies still harming your LGBT+ employees?
Have you congratulated an employee on their new marriage, and then fired them when they returned from their honeymoon? Some of you have.
Have you fired an employee because they are of a certain age and not married and having children, made the assumption they were gay, and found a way to get rid of them?
Or you drape rainbows on your logo, but you are donating to people who target our communities?
Or you are the funding behind organizations that don’t bear your name, so its harder to trace your actions, but the impact of the organizations and their agendas is even more severe and hypocritical against your rainbow-washed logos? Any time you see “People for the…” or “Concerned Citizens for…”, that seem to have been made up for the express reason of targeting at-risk communities, and making it harder to see who is funding the agenda.
“Disinformation” was a book that came out years ago and highlighted the process. Rachel Maddow regularly mentions and highlights the process on her show, and from time to time, news journals start to dig at the topic, but seem to only really touch on the surface of a machine that quietly hums on Madison Avenue, On Wall Street, in Washington’s Golden Triangle, and up the street in Congress, and at some of the fancier destination restaurants and watering holes where Senators and Representatives can be seen eating very expensive lunches with representatives from lobbying firms.
See if you can find out who the donors are behind those groups.
I don’t think you’ll like what you find out if you can, and you’ll have a hard time digging, since there is a process in place and defenses hunkered in to make it harder, passed through law firms and agencies, etc.
Pride is about protest.
Companies appear to have figured out they can make money off of the LGBT+ communities when they slap on a rainbow in June. Our communities need to be assured that there aren’t sometimes knives out behind those rainbows. We don’t want your support if it comes at a price that may be higher than any of us wishes to pay.
