In Defense of Rainbow Capitalism
Sometimes, I hear people criticize corporations when they do stuff for pride month. They think none of the businesses have any real principles, and they're just trying to pander to LGBT people and those who care about us.
I think this is usually true--some businesses probably are doing it to express their genuine beliefs, but most of them just want to make money. But this tells you something very important: they think they can make money by pandering to queer people. There's no way in Hell this would've happened in the 50s. In the 50s, they would've been boycotted by homophobes, and possibly faced legal trouble. It would've hurt. Today, the average person does not care that much. My conservative coworkers do not care that much. Of the customers who do care, most of them apparently support LGBT rights. You can tell because they're the ones being pandered to.1 It's a sign of how much progress we've made, and of how many people would like more.
Of course, this is not the case with all businesses, but it is with the ones that are cynically pandering to queer people.↩