It has become a familiar sight every June to see businesses break out the rainbow decorations to show their support for gay customers. Pushback to that has historically been mostly from the right but increasingly there are has been a more left-leaning critique of this rainbow capitalism too. Certainly there have been some businesses who have missed the mark in their Pride Month advertising. Some have been a little ridiculous, like Red Lobster putting a rainbow filter over their Cheddar Bay biscuits.
Like, why would you do that? It’s kind of strange and also kind of lazy and also, as the kids say these days, kind of cringe. Red Lobster is not the only example. There are a bunch of other potential examples that are phone-it-in or tone-deaf (or worse). These businesses deserve the mockery they get, just like any other business who does something hilariously ham-handed, but the broader phenomenon of businesses openly embracing gay customers is a positive development. Rainbow capitalism is good actually.
We Should Want Ubiquitous ‘Gay is Normal’ Signaling
Jokes and funny memes aside for the moment, it is worth remembering how hard things used to be for gay people in public. Are things perfect now? Of course not, but things used to be truly, consistently awful. Stores and restaurants would ask gay people to leave. They didn’t want their money. Being outed meant being humiliated. When businesses started to be more welcoming, that was good for gay people’s experienced dignity, and it was not that long ago that that started being the case.
Some may say that these businesses are not being authentic, that they are merely pandering to chase dollars. The best response to that is to ask “so?” So what if it’s mostly a public relations thing? Why is that a problem? The whole point of capitalism is to transform profit-seeking motives into socially beneficial actions. This does exactly that.
When Subaru started marketing specifically to lesbian customers way before it was cool, they were doing it for profit-oriented reasons but that still sent a nice signal that lesbians were going to be welcomed, that their money was still green. Fast forward to today and yes, the pandering can be very eye roll-inducing, but it’s so much better than the reverse. In fact, it’s not only better; it’s actively helpful.
We want LGBT people to be seen as completely normal. Full stop. If there is a teenager somewhere who has parents who do not approve of their sexual identity and they’re afraid to come out, we want them to be able to look around and say to themselves “ok, even if my parents don’t accept who I am, most of the rest of society still does, so I’m going to be alright. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m ok and I’m going to be ok.” That gay teenager should be central to our thoughts on LGBT-politics. That teenager is scared and doesn’t feel welcomed and doesn’t feel loved. We ought to be heart-broken for them. Every single we can do as a society to reach out to them and reassure them and let them know that they are seen and loved and cared for, that’s a good thing.
Rainbow flag ubiquity can help with that. Businesses engaging in rainbow capitalism are adding to this sense that an overwhelming majority of people support same-sex relationships. That signals support to gay individuals and also signals to people who hold anti-gay views that it is they who are outside the mainstream, not those gay individuals. In 1996, just 27 percent of the public supported gay marriage; today it’s 71 percent (and practically universal among younger voters). Even a majority of Republicans now support gay marriage (less than 1 in 5 did in 2004). Those are remarkable achievements. If we want those number to go even higher, it will help if even the most buttoned-up, mainstream, boring parts of society are also on-board with gay rights.
Cultural Power as a Bulwark Against Political Backsliding
It is no secret that there is a burgeoning Republican backlash to LGBT equality. There is new anti-trans legislation in Texas, Alabama, and Ohio (among others). Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education Act appears to be aimed at making classrooms more hostile to LGBT people. Some fear that the Supreme Court will overturn Obergefell.
Republicans can feel the tide turning against them culturally and are attempting to use political power to stem that. That’s not likely to work in the long-term because, in a liberal democracy, there is not much fungibility between economic power, political power, and cultural power. In other words, it is generally difficult to use political power to reshape the culture and it’s hard to use cultural power to reshape the economy, etc. Meanwhile, educational polarization means that progressives have a disproportionate amount of cultural power while Republicans have a disproportionate amount of political power. The thing is though that Republicans crave cultural power, but because they’ve structured their political movement as being first and foremost about sticking a thumb in the eyes of younger, more educated people, it’s basically impossible for them to get that cultural power. They can’t get their way in cultural matters directly and so are trying to use their political power to force individuals and firms to act as they wish. It is not just socially regressive, it’s authoritarian.
The most effective progressive response to this state-directed anti-LGBT push must have a prong in each power direction. Of course progressives should fight for LGBT equality as a political power matter. But they should also understand that cultural and economic power matter a ton too. Major businesses openly taking the side of being pro-LGBT is an important means of leveraging both cultural and political power in defense of LGBT-rights and that should not be lightly cast aside.
There’s Nothing Radical About Celebrating Freedom and Equality
Gay marriage has never been a threat to traditional marriage. In fact, looked at from a certain perspective, it is an homage to traditional marriage. It says that marriage is an ancient and wholesome institution and that it is monstrous to exclude same-sex couples from the many benefits of marriage. Nor does one have to be a political radical to be authentically gay. There are gay centrists. Jared Polis is gay, and nothing about his centrism should be understood to be any form of sell-out of other gay people.
As importantly, though respect for gay people is relatively new in our nation’s history, the political principles that undergird that respect are not. Free and Equal are bedrock American principles. We don’t always live up to that, but that is at least what we say we are about and what we should aspire to. Gay individuals being free to love whom they choose, and their relationships being treated as equal to rather than beneath heterosexual relationships, is thus completely in line with with American values.
Over the next 31 days, between Pride Month, Juneteenth, and the Fourth of July, we Americans get several opportunities to celebrate freedom. What’s more, none of these are mutually exclusive or take away from each other. The spirit of all of them flows in the same direction. There is nothing at all inconsistent about being patriotic, saying Black Lives Matter, and affirming gay rights. This is modern America. Diverse, inclusive, a place where everyone gets to write their own story. Businesses have an important role to play in making that manner of celebrating different strands of freedom be seen as the default in society and, to the extent that they help that combination be seen as the default, they are doing something quite positive.
By all means, have a field day dunking on bad marketing, and rainbow capitalism is without-a-doubt a target-rich environment for bad marketing, but also take a moment to consider that, for all the face palming that rainbow-filtered Cheddar Bay biscuits can induce, businesses leaning into being gay friendly is a quite nice change. Rainbow capitalism is good actually.