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A participant in the Pride Houston parade in 2024 holds up a flag while walking next to a float.
Thousands of people are expected to gather in downtown Houston Saturday for an annual celebration of the city’s LGBTQ+ community and its allies.
Those who attend the Houston Pride parade and festival may notice a streamlined entertainment lineup, along with fewer corporate logos on display.
Representatives of Pride Houston 365, the nonprofit organization that has held the event for nearly 50 years, said they lost about 20 sponsors this year that accounted for more than $180,000 in funding. And some of the continuing sponsors requested they no longer be publicized as supporters.
The reason? Diversity, equity and inclusion policies have been banned at both the state and federal level, and the LGBTQ+ community has come under attack by political conservatives.
“We wouldn’t say we lost them due to DEI if it hadn’t come from the sponsors themselves. They literally did not mince words and told us straight up,” said Kendra Walker, a former Pride Houston president who now serves as an advisor to the organization. “They used the term ‘DEI.’ They used the term ‘Trump.’
“It’s really sad,” she added, “because these were some sponsors who had been sponsors for over 35 years.”
Walker and Kerry-Ann Morrison, the current Pride Houston president, declined to name which companies ended their sponsorships or which ones asked to no longer be publicized. They also said they have no animosity toward those companies, acknowledging that some businesses’ bottom lines could be impacted if they were to lose out on federal grant funding because of a connection – or even a perceived connection – to DEI policies.
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Companies distancing themselves from pride events is not surprising to Tammi Wallace, the co-founder, president and CEO of the Greater Houston LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce, which counts Pride Houston as a longtime member. Even some LGBTQ+-owned businesses in the region have become reluctant to make those ties well known, Wallace said.
In January, shortly after President Donald Trump was inaugurated and issued an executive order banning DEI measures within the federal government, the chamber of commerce had to scramble to find a new venue for its Thrive Small Business Summit & Matchmaker event. The Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas had been set to host the event, but told the chamber a few days beforehand it could no longer do so because of Trump’s order, according to Wallace.
“It’s complex,” Wallace said this week. “Companies are trying to navigate the waters, uncharted territory. They’re trying to figure out their strategies.”
While many sponsors ended their support for Pride Houston 365, Morrison and Walker said they’ve been able to secure some new sponsors to help make up for the losses. Among those are beer brands Corona and Modelo – which are both owned by Constellation Brands – and Cricket Wireless, they said.
Rob Salinas/Houston Public Media
A participant in the 2024 Pride Houston parade holds up a sign.
Neither of those companies immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday. Neither did Anheuser-Busch InBev. The company’s Bud Light brand has long been promoted as a sponsor of Pride Houston, but its logo no longer appears on the organization’s website.
Bud Light sales declined in the Houston area and across the country in 2023 after the brand received backlash and boycotts over its marketing campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Conversely, Wallace said companies that distance themselves from the LGBTQ+ community could also be impacted.
“The LGBTQ+ community does have a long memory,” Wallace said. “I think it remains to be seen what’s going to happen on the back side of this.”
The immediate impact of losing sponsors forced Pride Houston to scrap many of its Pride month events leading up to Saturday’s festival and parade, dwindling the lineup from about 20 events to just five this year. The organization also had to cut back on some of its other services, such as youth scholarships and other charitable initiatives. Morrison said Pride Houston didn’t have as much money to spend on entertainers Saturday.
It costs about $500,000 to put on the festival and parade, according to Walker, who said those events are proceeding as planned and without many changes. The festival is scheduled to start at 11 a.m., with the parade set to begin shortly after 7 p.m.
“Pride is a protest, right? It started as a protest and turned into a celebration of us gaining the rights that we have over the years,” Morrison said. “Now, all of that’s under attack. So now, more than ever, we need to be visible, we need to be resistant, we need to show up.”