In 2016, pushback against North Carolina’s attempt to pass anti-trans legislation cost the state nearly $4 billion and a Republican governor’s reelection, and that year Pride Month collections were prolific nationwide.



Not even a decade later, 2023 is witnessing high-profile corporate appeasement in the face of a right-wing media-motivated onslaught of record-breaking anti-trans legislation and violent, bigoted threats over Pride merchandise. LGBTQ people are now left wondering if support (or at least, the profit-motivated mirage of it) is fading. 

In reality, there is ample evidence that LGBTQ allyship is both profitable and popular. A 2017 study found that LGBTQ-inclusive ads had the potential to increase sales by 40%, with stronger brand recall and a higher likelihood of recommendation. More recently, GLAAD found that more than half of Americans in 2022 expected CEOs to be at the forefront of discussions on LGBTQ rights, and people were twice as likely to purchase the brand and 4.5 times more likely to want to work there if the company is LGBTQ-inclusive. And as of 2015, the global purchasing power of the LGBTQ community amounted to nearly $4 trillion, with the U.S. population at nearly $1 trillion on its own.

In 2016, businesses and organizations were not afraid to make bold stances against North Carolina’s legislature in the name of trans rights, such as when PayPal withdrew plans for a Charlotte-based facility, the NBA relocated its All-Star game, and the NCAA pulled its championship games. (The sports cancellations were a particularly considerable hit to the home state of Michael Jordan and college basketball’s most heated rivalry.) These social and financial shockwaves sent anti-trans efforts in North Carolina essentially into the shadows until this year. Now, the state is entertaining 10 anti-trans bills.

Reporting suggests the anti-trans legislators in North Carolina feel “insulated” by the rising wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country — 500+ bills have been proposed this year in every state except Delaware, according to the Anti-Trans Legislation Tracker. Georgia Equality Director Jeff Graham told Axios that with such legislation coming from every corner of the country, “threats and fears of boycotts change because … where are [companies] going to go?"

While businesses can’t boycott every state, conservatives seem to believe they can boycott every business. Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who lost his reelection bid in 2016 in part for signing the state’s anti-trans bathroom bill, told Axios, “Corporate America knows these issues are toxic to their business,” adding, “It's just a lose-lose for them to get involved and they're going to now stay in their lanes.” 

Daily Wire pundit and anti-trans bigot Matt Walsh would use almost the exact same rhetoric a month later to encourage boycotts against companies offering Pride Month merchandise.

While Walsh stated earlier that a boycott of “every woke company” was both unnecessary and impractical, other branches of right-wing media have seemingly pushed boycotts for every business that dares signal any sort of approval or even acknowledgment of the LGBTQ community.

But right-wing media fail to understand what many people already know: that corporate allyship to the queer community is in many ways little more than public posturing. As Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse put it, “The free market is telling right-wingers something they refuse to hear: Transgender people exist, and they buy stuff.”

One of the most prominent manufactured outrages this year (but hardly the first) began well before Pride Month; in March, Anheuser-Busch sent trans TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney a personalized Bud Light can to celebrate one year of her transition. The intense right-wing outrage against Bud Light culminated in threats to employees, destruction of its (sometimes incorrect) products, and departures of upper-level management. The story survived several news cycles and it has now become a point of reference in the mainstream media as conservatives rage over new businesses almost daily.

More recently, Target has itself become a target in this boycott frenzy. As the company released its annual Pride collection ahead of June, right-wing media began claiming both the company and its shoppers were in some way “pervert[ed]” and even encouraged their audiences to vandalize Pride displays.

Anheuser-Busch and Target have ceded ground amid these boycotts, withdrawing support for Mulvaney and pulling some Pride merchandise from stores, respectively. Not only is this a dangerous abandonment of a vulnerable community, it also adds more fuel to the fire and seems likely to be ultimately more damaging to their bottom lines than maintaining a firm stance in support of LGBTQ rights.

For one, right-wing pundits have made it clear that there are no boundaries to their (literal) ever-growing list of “woke” companies to boycott, capriciously turning on even Fox News and Chick-fil-a. They are leaving little breathing room for businesses and abandoning any sense of brand loyalty.

With a rather ambitious list of companies to avoid, these pundits are struggling to provide their vindictive audiences with their own “unwoke” substitutions. The Ultra Right Beer company that sought to compete with Bud Light by selling conservative-branded $20 six-packs floundered in finding a brewery before settling in Georgia. Customers have complained that The Daily Wire’s offerings of razors and chocolates in an attempt to subvert Harry’s Razors, Gillette, and Hershey’s are subpar and poorly executed. Black Rifle Coffee Company, the “Starbucks of the right” favored by Kyle Rittenhouse, has faced a series of lawsuits.

Companies should not bow to the violent demands of right-wing media and their audiences, because it is clear that they will ultimately boycott themselves into a corner, and businesses that cave will likely lose even more than they would remaining steadfast in LGBTQ acceptance. The right has still not forgiven Bud Light even after it left Mulvaney out to dry, nor have conservatives returned to Target after it hid and gutted its Pride collection, and now those companies have lost the confidence of LGBTQ consumers, too. This moment is, however, an opportunity to learn valuable lessons on how to be ready for new reactionary campaigns in the future.