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The last three years have been a humbling experience for Pride. What was once an over-the-top rainbow blow-out has been dialled back a stunning degree, thanks to the colossal wave of public pushback.

It’s been a sucker-punch for LGBT activists, who’ve been dumbfounded by the complete reversal of fortunes. Corporate sponsorships have dried up, local organisations are filing Chapter 11, red states are going on the offensive with June alternatives, and Republican support for same-sex marriage is in a dizzying freefall.

Support for Same-Sex Marriage Falls to 37% Amongst Republicans

In one of the most dramatic sea changes, millions of Americans are walking away from what Obergefell unleashed on the nation in 2015. According to the latest Gallup poll, just released Wednesday, only 37% of Republicans now say same-sex marriage should be legal — a whopping 18-point drop since 2022 (55%).

While Democrats still strongly back the redefinition of marriage at 87%, skeptical Independents and the GOP are driving the country’s numbers down to 65% support overall, 6% lower than 2022 and 2023. In at least 11 states, legislators have even introduced bills to roll back same-sex marriage.

Pride Funding Dries Up

While the buyer’s remorse on Obergefell may be the most striking, what the nation is witnessing with this sustained pushback on Pride may be permanently changing the corporate, state, and political landscape. In a lot of major cities — places like New York, Salt Lake, Louisville, St. Louis, Orlando, and Pittsburgh — event organisers are struggling to find the funding to get by. NYC Pride, the largest parade in America, told The Wall Street Journal that it had to cancel some of its parties and slash spending after last year’s wake-up call when longtime partners just vanished.

In places like Florida, some organisers are taking a break from their events after so many businesses pulled out.

“All of a sudden, bingo. Here you have no money, no grant money, no supporting money, to make operations, to plan, to get any kind of anything,” Carrie West explained to NPR. “Oh my gosh, it was, it’s devastating.”

Pittsburgh Pride is expecting to lose up to 60% of its sponsor dollars — but even that pales in comparison to Phoenix Pride, which had to file for bankruptcy after last year’s $350,000 deficit.

“Like many Pride organisations and LGBTQ+ nonprofits across the country, Phoenix Pride has faced mounting financial pressures that threaten our long-term sustainability,” the group admitted.

E. Ciszek, who specialises in advertising at The University of Texas at Austin, warned that this isn’t “just a matter of budget cuts” on the part of major brands. “It’s important to take a step back and see this more as a moment of risk, a moment of political pressure, and looking really at the limits of corporate allyship, particularly when LGBTQ visibility has become really politically costly. … What once was [an] organisational asset has now become an organisational risk,” he warned.

And in a lot of people’s minds, that isn’t going to change any time soon. Patti Hearn, the executive director of Seattle Pride, was pessimistic about a comeback, predicting that the public pressure is here to stay. “We’re not going to return to 2019, where we had much bigger levels of sponsorship.”

June Becoming Nuclear Family Month

But brands and businesses aren’t the only ones rejecting the Left’s traditions for June — states are too. In Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, and Oklahoma, leaders are replacing Pride Month with declarations of “Nuclear Family Month” or “Fidelity Month.”

Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee kicked off the trend earlier this year, proclaiming, “The nuclear family is God’s perfect design for humanity and is aligned with the long-held traditional values of Tennessee,” but “is under attack in our beloved State and nation, and it is our responsibility to uplift, protect, and support values that help Tennessee prosper…” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) followed suit, triggering other conservatives to do the same.

Encouraging Trends

The trends are incredibly encouraging, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins underscored on Newsmax 2. “We’re actually seeing this conversation [about the importance of marriage and family] not just on cable television, but we’re actually seeing this in the halls of government. Government leaders taking this stand,” he pointed out.

“Sometimes leadership is nothing more than having the courage to say what most people understand to be the truth, but they’re afraid to say it. And I think it’s time that we begin having these conversations and not be ashamed. We do not need to apologise for the fact that we believe the best environment for a child is to be in a home with a married mom and a dad,” he insisted.

“The social sciences back that up. History backs it up. We know it to be true. Why not say it?”

Perkins continued on that theme during Tuesday’s “Washington Watch,” telling FRC’s Casey Harper, “It matters what we condone in society — because when we condone that which is contrary to God’s structure and order, we all pay the price for it.” As Harper interjected, “This is not a victimless crime,” referring to the children whose needs were left out of the same-sex marriage equation.

‘A Child’s Mother and Father Isn’t Optional’: Katy Faust

The reality, Them Before Us Founder Katy Faust insists, is that “Republicans can and do love their gay and lesbian-identifying friends. We just don’t think children should be motherless and fatherless in the name of love.”

It’s time to understand, she stressed, “Obergefell actually victimised children.”

The moment “we made husbands and wives optional in marriage, mothers and fathers became optional in parenthood law. The problem is that, for children, their mother and father are never optional. It always leaves a lifelong wound. It always destabilises their existence. It hampers their identity formation. It hinders their development,” she told Perkins recently.

“We need to get back to the place where we are elevating and promoting the one family structure where children have their mother and father in the home, and we want to tell the court that they need to make a choice. They can either have gay marriage, or they can protect children’s rights to their mother and father. But they can’t do both.”

Now, 11 years into this Obergefell experiment, more Americans are coming to the realisation that it wasn’t about love after all. People are starting to see the big picture, FRC’s Joseph Backholm emphasised.

“Every day, Americans are coming to terms with the broken promises of the Sexual Revolution. We were told that same-sex marriage was necessary because personal happiness is the greatest good, and the only way for people who identify as gay to be happy is to be able to marry whomever they want. That was never true. We were also told there would be no negative impact, only the social good of same-sex couples being removed from second-class citizenship status,” he said.

“But now, drag queens are performing in front of six-year-olds while adults cheer, boys are standing atop the podium at girls’ track and field events all over the country, and children are having their genitals cut off in a different but related effort to achieve happiness outside the created order.”

More Americans are connecting the dots, Backholm warned. “It will only continue.”

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Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand.

Image via Adobe.