For some, June marks the first month of full-blown summer, with all its attendant pool parties, blooming flowers, cookouts, and ice cream.
But for progressives, June is the time to remind everyone that you’re a very good person who supports all manner of sexual degeneracy.
There’s a fundamental dividing line between these two types of people, but this year, at least, it appears that the former are winning, a fact evidenced by displays at Target Stores around the country.
Target is opting for America-themed displays this June rather than the rainbow-colored merchandise that usually graces the front of their stores during “Pride Month.” The change comes after consumers put their money where their backlash was and boycotted Target en masse in 2023. The same goes for Bud Light, who is still courting back the football bros after a PR disaster in which they hired a transgender “influencer” to sell their beer in 2023.
Why are corporations suddenly changing how they act about LGBT issues in public?
It’s not that most people don’t support gay marriage. According to a 2023-2024 Pew Research study, 67% of Americans support it. Yet just about that same percentage supports restricting female athletic competitions to those who were born female, whether they identify as such or not. On the issue of whether biological men should use female bathrooms, Americans are split pretty evenly. Society isn't quite open-minded enough for the newest installments of sexual degeneracy, but is happy to adopt all the culture shibboleths of the more classic victories of the LGBT movement (i.e., your boomer uncle who probably voted for Trump awkwardly congratulating the “nice gay couple”).
When Proposition 8 was passed in 2008, banning gay marriage in California of all places, 51% opposed gay marriage. Then-Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama was stating on the campaign trail that he was too Christian to support gays getting married.
Yet after a vigorous campaign across Hollywood to normalize homosexual unions, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) was passed down from the Supreme Court only seven years later. A few years after that, states were fighting to protect vulnerable female-only spaces from dudes in dresses. The LGBT movement widened the Overton Window at breakneck speed.
Who could blame them? The LGBT movement had successfully hoodwinked Americans on gay marriage in just a few years. Dudes with convincing plastic surgery fixing their bras next to our daughters seemed the next logical step.
Turns out, it was all too much, too fast. The loveable gay couple in “Modern Family,” Mitch and Cam, were easy enough to support and score brownie points with your nice lesbian coworker. But the transgender movement butted against another cultural value – that women should be valued and protected – and the clash was more than progressives bargained for.
The reason that Pride Month looks so different this year, even for massive corporations that can afford the dip in sales, is that normal people refused to be tricked twice. There’s statistical backing to the idea that the zealotry amongst the LGBT lobby has damaged their cause – Gen Z is reportedly more discriminatory towards LGBT people than last year.
Such statistics should cause readers to take heart when constantly bombarded with the idea that their views on these issues make them enemies of the proverbial arc of history that bends towards justice. No movement has won without the backing of normal people, and that is why so much of the LGBT lobby seeks to normalize their behaviors. They may have succeeded with Obergefell, but not again this time around.
Sarah Wilder is a writer and commentator on culture and the family. Formerly a reporter at the Daily Caller, her work has been published in Chronicles Magazine, The Federalist, and The American Mind.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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