In my chosen hometown of Seattle, last year’s Pride was different. It was downtown instead of in the hip queer-ish Capital Hill neighborhood. It was bigger, it was longer and it was decidedly more corporate. I know because I was marching toward the end of it in full high-femme burlesque get-up in agay pride.jpg rainbow line of other queer burlesque vixens: I was Ms. Violet. We did the bump and grind through mountains of ads, fliers, and free junk.

“The gay and lesbian liberation movement has turned into a gay and lesbian marketing movement” and complains that “a political movement is not what is being sold.” said the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Urvashi Vaid.

Why does Pride have corporate sponsors in the first place? One city’s website answers:

“Portland Pride cannot be funded entirely with donations and booth fees. Rather than charge admission or raise booth fees, Pride Northwest has several corporate sponsors. Some of them are national, but most are local. Some sponsors give us money, and others donate goods and services we need.”

I admit that’s hard to argue with. We do want a free and comfortable Pride with entertainment and local booths. (Setting up booths and floats and events takes the hard work of laborers and tech people.) And we also want it flamboyant. I mean, we’re Queers and we need to show how fabulous we are. We get one weekend a year to be a little less afraid to kiss our lovers on the street because there are more of us banded together in one spot. It’s the time to live it up big-time.

There is a history of how Pride got to be so corporate in every big city. It has to do with something else that’s been going on simultaneously: As we know, Corporate America is becoming increasingly more gay friendly in terms of hiring practices and personnel. The Human Rights Campaign web site’s National Corporate Sponsors page has this introduction:

“The support from corporate America to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is directly tied to HRC’s overall success. Please show your loyalty and support by directing your friends/family to our National Corporate Sponsors, listed below.“

Now, I love the HRC, but a corporation’s sponsorship of Gay Pride does not make me feel like it’s my duty to support them. In fact, these corporations are only the new generation of the same homophobic and patriarchal structures that marginalize queers and other oppressed groups (big business, monopoly, cut-throat capitalism, excess, greed). I don’t owe Corporate America, it owes me. I might support a corporation if it also gives money to gay rights causes and if I approve of all of thier business practices.

So if I have no problem with Corporate America owing me a parade and I don’t shop corporate, so their ads won’t effect me, I guess that’s not the reason I don’t want them paying for my big fabulous parade. I think it’s really the excess paper ad waste and free junk made overseas in sweatshops that really turns me off. It gets cleaned up immediately but it winds up in a landfill instead of being recycled. The only thing I approve of is free condoms.

But while I was marching last year and taking advantage of corporate sponsorship, most of my younger friends were not. They were having their own anti-corporate separate parade in the old neighborhood, lots of independent performance artists scheming for a better world.

I definitely felt torn as I realized that the corporate sponsors could be putting their money toward the legal battle for human rights and gay marriage. Instead, they had a captive audience for thier ad campaigns in exchange for paying for the loads of Mardi Gras beads that ended up in our waste baskets.

This year I’ve decided to perform my naughty Naked Folksinger act with other performers at the pre-show at our local lesbian bar. And then I’m committing some time to a local rights organization. I’m not marching anymore. I got terrible blisters anyway.

For more great articles and views on corporate sponsorship of Pride, visit Nina’s wonderful article from last year.