It’s Pride Month, and almost anyone who uses social media knows what that means.
Businesses across the United States will virtue signal by letting us know how they support the LGBT community, and they will often add a pride flag to their profile picture on social media — except in some parts of the world. You see, these companies may say they support LGBT rights when it’s convenient and profitable for them. However, what they ultimately care about is profit — not LGBT rights.
The NFL is one of those organizations.
The NFL made its profile picture on Twitter incorporate a pride flag and wrote, “Happy Pride Month! The NFL is proud to unveil our new NFL Pride shield to show our support and solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. We stand with LGBTQ+ people this month and yearlong with a commitment to our players, our fans and our staff to live proudly and authentically.”
Guess what the NFL did on the NFL China Twitter page to celebrate Pride Month? Nothing. The NFL won’t say this in China, a country that bars same-sex marriage and same-sex couples from adopting, most likely because the league thinks China would not like the message. China’s authoritarian government abuses human rights and could ban people from watching NFL games.
Not to mention, the NFL has a political action committee called Gridiron PAC that has donated to people that have a more conservative viewpoint when it comes to LGBT issues. That includes Republicans Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and many others, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Disney is on the list of corporate hypocrites as well.
Disney has no problem playing both sides of the issue so it can make as much money as possible. It sells Pride Month merchandise online, and its Twitter cover photo now includes a pride flag. Disney also tweeted that same picture out and wrote, “There’s room for everyone under the rainbow. Rainbow Happy #PrideMonth!”
This is the same Disney that removed a kiss between two female characters from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker when showing the movie in Singapore. While the country should be a model for healthcare systems across the globe, that’s not the case on LGBT rights. Both prison time and caning are legal punishments for gay people in Singapore.
Mercedes-Benz is another example of this empty virtue-signaling.
The German luxury vehicle company added rainbows to the profile pictures of various Twitter accounts it manages in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. For some reason, Mercedes-Benz mysteriously left its Middle East account off the list. That’s a region that includes countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, and others where capital punishment is a penalty for homosexual behavior. That may seem like a much bigger deal than which basketball team a transgender girl could hypothetically play on, but to these companies, maybe it’s not.
If you’re oil rich in the Middle East and think gay people deserve to die for being gay, Mercedes-Benz will sell you a car without any woke messaging.
Ideally, companies would stick to selling products and benefiting society by treating workers well and being environmentally friendly. Pretending to care about LGBT issues is an empty gesture, but companies will continue to do it as long as they think they can make a buck off it.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
