While I don’t like corporate pride I’m scared about how many companies aren’t participating this year for fear of backlash.

It is very worrying. One thing that really strikes me is comparing the vastly different reactions to North Carolina's Bathroom Bill of seven years ago, versus the non-existent corporate/centrist response to the recent wave of anti-LGBT hate legislation. In 2016 after North Carolina passed their "Bathroom Bill" (HB2) mandating that people could only use bathrooms in government facilities corresponding to their birth certificate, the backlash was huge.

Eighty corporate CEOs signed a letter urging Governor McCrory to veto HB2. $400 million dollars in planned investments were cancelled by hundreds of companies, who condemned the bill as a gross violation of human rights, costing North Carolina an estimated $3.76 billion over twelve years.

The NBA cancelled the 2017 All-Star Game in Charlotte. The Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Hornets both openly spoke against the Bathroom Bill as discriminatory. Sanders and Clinton both condemned HB2, and even some Republicans, like Ohio Governor John Kasich, joined them. Plenty of musicians, including Bruce Springsteen, Maroon 5, Demi Lovato, and Ringo Starr cancelled concerts in solidarity with the North Carolina transgender community. States and cities throughout the U.S. issued travel bans barring government employees from non-essential travel to North Carolina. Police departments throughout North Carolina openly stated that they would refuse to enforce HB2.

By November of 2016 HB2 was so unpopular that it contributed to the electoral defeat of Governor McCrory. In 2017, after the NCAA threatened to ban North Carolina from hosting championships for five years unless they repealed HB2, North Carolina's Republican controlled legislature relented and removed the provisions of HB2 banning trans people from public bathrooms.

Now, seven years later Republican states are signing into law bills far worse than HB2 ever was, but there's nowhere even close to the same backlash for doing so. Not only is transphobic rhetoric getting more and more hateful and dehumanizing, but also that the coalition of people willing to meaningfully defend trans people has gone from a broad consensus, including corporations, celebrities, and centrists, to a far smaller number of activists who can't even make the Democratic Party agree that the lives of Trans people matter. That's whats concerning, even if the Pride of Corporations and the Democratic Party was always hollow and utterly lacking in radicalism, it is still far better then their current acquiescence to deranged chuds.

Hell just a few years ago :melon-musk: was tweeting this now he's encouraging parents to watch Matt Walsh hate speech.