Pride organisers warn Trump’s DEI purge directly hitting UK events as corporate sponsorships drop
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pride-lgbtq-trump-dei-cancelled-funding-uk-b2778107.html
Posted by BreakfastTop6899
Pride organisers warn Trump’s DEI purge directly hitting UK events as corporate sponsorships drop
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pride-lgbtq-trump-dei-cancelled-funding-uk-b2778107.html
Posted by BreakfastTop6899
33 Comments
Pride is and should always be a protest and a demonstration. Get the rainbow-washing, corporate capitalism out of it.
It’s interesting really, it kinda shows how fickle the whole thing was. They were only doing it for business reasons
> corporate sponsorships drop
Isn’t this a good thing?
People are always complaining about corporate pink-washing, or whatever it’s called.
It’s quite amazing really.
Do one thing. People complain.
Do the opposite. People still complain.
Do nothing. People complain even more.
I’m beginning to think that people don’t actually want workable solutions.
In fact, I think that if someone were to come up with the best workable solution, they’d be the most hated person ever.
’cause it’s all about the complaining.
That’s what people want.
You can be proud without corporates and public financing it. Proud people don’t accept handouts.
Dont worry im sure the pro Palestines will let you have pride
Has nothing to do with them tripling their prices then!
When we went to renew our slot in the parade we were priced out.
Corporations aren’t dropping sponsorship just because of Trump. Pride is fine but the political statements around Isreal and Palestine are not. You are asking businesses, who ultimately want to stay neutral, to get behind a position they do not feel comfortable with.
LGBT groups should fundraise and do their own events rather than expect it to be paid by others.
you want a parade / party ….sure, you pay for it.
Should have never taken money from massive corporations in the first place.
They’ve realised there’s no money in it, and that it’s been so overdone in recent years that a lot of people within that community are tired of it as well. They just want to get on with their lives, and not have people making a song and dance about it on their behalf.
Why do we need pride events anyway given they have equality now?
I think the spirit of Pride will not suffer one iota due to lack of corporate Ethicswashing.
Go forth and march my gay friends!
>The situation has led one expert to warn that “the golden era of corporate sponsorship might be over” for ~~LGBTQ~~ organisers.
DEI cutbacks are part of it, absolutely, but at the same time, economic uncertainty is up. Companies are less likely to give *anyone* money for free street parties, and individual donors are tightening up donations to charities across the board.
This is quite well discussed across the charity/NCVO sector – [https://www.ncvo.org.uk/news-and-insights/news-index/the-road-ahead-2025/challenges/](https://www.ncvo.org.uk/news-and-insights/news-index/the-road-ahead-2025/challenges/) is a good example.
Barclays (or Clydesdale personal finance trading as Barclays) and Vodafone are companies who have claimed this year that they can’t have done something massively transphobic BECAUSE they give token amounts of cash to LGBT organisations.
It’s absolutely reputation washing. And unsurprisingly Vodafone have since made a substantial apology. I’ll hear from the ombudsman about Barclays in the next few weeks. I don’t expect that to go well for Barclays as they spent months digging themselves into a bigger hole.
It was always weird that corporate sponsorships started making up a big part of Pride funding, honestly. It was always performative advertising and it’s no surprise that the bubble burst on that, although it has been quicker and more sudden than expected because there’s been a significant political backlash against it in the US.
I suspect there were a large number of people working for the organisations that turned their Pride support up to 11 during the early 2020s who weren’t really comfortable with that, too – either because they don’t actually support gay rights (a significant minority, mostly religious people, don’t), or because they don’t think their company should be supporting particular political causes.
I’m not really sure we need big Pride events any more in the UK anyway, it’s no longer a counter-cultural fight for acceptance (gay rights are accepted and entrenched in law and culture by most people already).
PRIDE lately hás been associated with Palestine (which is weird, as pretty sure LGBT community would be stoned to death in such places).
I have also seen protests pro Iran with LGBT flags as well. Like, hello?
Hahah what the hell has Trump got to do with that. People are just sick to death of it.
I don’t think pride should need corporate sponsorships anyway because if being an ally is dependent on the political climate then it’s not real and we don’t want it
That’s fine, you want the corporations out of this.
It’s supposed to be a protest
People can blame this on Trump but really it’s anti-ESG.
Anti-ESG isn’t really rooted in any political belief, just PR. The trouble is you do anything progressive and you get one set of nutcases shouting that you’re trying to turn their kids gay and another set screaming that you’re not doing enough and nobody ever gives you a positive response. You can satisfy both by doing nothing so that’s what happens.
It’s a shame really because businesses can drive a lot of genuine change even if their motives are entirely self centred and their actions largely performative.
We don’t need pride anymore. But a Love parade will be great
Why would I put my company’s name on the list knowing that the event will highly likely to be hijacked by millions other political messages? Antisemitism, pro-Hamas, pro illegals, kids transitioning, all that? It’s more a business liability than anything else.
They shouldn’t have been relying on corporate sponsorship in the first place.
These companies were never motivated by a sense of decency. They looked at it as an opportunity to expand their reach and they were welcomed with open arms.
Good? This kind of event has become much too corporate.
Lmao it was always performative on the part of the corporations. They don’t actually care about it… they just want people thinking they do. If you look at their non western social media they ain’t supporting it at all.
Either companies are afraid of bigots feeling empowered or (more likely) it was entirely performative.
More and more LGB persons are not identifying with Pride when it’s hijacked to push pro-terrorist and anti-women rhetoric. With a growing divide between sexual orientation and gender identity groups.
I actually don’t know a single lesbian in any of the community spaces in my town who is going this year. And it’s mostly because they aren’t being *allowed* to find males and male genitalia unattractive.
Imagine being *so* misogynistic, women can’t have a sexual orientation that excludes males…joke
Oh you sweet summer child; you actually thought these corporations cared to begin with?
This is like showing colour to the colour blind.
Why is the UK following Trumpet’s anti-DEI rhetoric anyways? Do you have a hate on for people different from yourselves? Personally I’d ignore everything out of the toxic Trumpet camp. This is the United Kingdom, not the United States.
Wait, what? Megacorps never actually cared about anything other than which way the wind is blowing in order to maximise profit? I am shocked….shocked i say!
Good. Get that corporate shit out of pride. Load of assimilationist, pandering wank from the off, and would you look at that? We meant fuck all to them all along. I don’t want to be a PR asset for JP Morgan, thanks.
These so called sponsors need to be named. Then people can decide if they want to continue throw sponsorship of those organisations.
Personally, I’m glad to see a shift away from overly performative DEI initiatives. I value individual merit over group identity and believe that roles and representation should be earned rather than allocated based on group status.
In recent years, it feels like media and hiring have become more about compliance and ideological alignment than actual talent. That often results in stories and characters that don’t feel authentic or resonate with broader audiences.
For example, here’s a DEI advocate using economic pressure in a way that raises concerns about free expression [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wv8ckDqlk3U](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wv8ckDqlk3U)
On a personal note, I’m active in r/UFC ,one of the biggest gay subs, where identity isn’t used as a shield or a weapon. The conversations there are far more grounded and genuine, focusing on shared interests like martial arts, rather than ideology.
To me, today’s corporate Pride events feel more like a marketing performance than real solidarity, similar to how some companies embraced DEI when it was profitable but are now quietly backing away.