Opinion
June 4, 2023 | 9:52 p.m
Drag activists Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are honored at Dodgers Stadium for Pride Month. AFP via Getty Images
If you’re old enough, think back to the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.
This author covered it as a young reporter while watching the extravagant Gay Pride march down Market Street on the opening day of the convention, centered on the contingent of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
The group, then led by Sister Boom-Boom, was notable for their sparing use of leather to cover their bodies and for their deliberate mockery of the Catholic Church.
One Republican activist observing the scene commented on this author: “In 1972 we paid people to do this to George McGovern in Miami; Now the Democrats are doing it for us for free.”
That exaggeration — the 1984 Democrats attempted to keep the Bay Area gay scene under wraps — seems an understatement today, as the Democratic Party has bet so heavily on limitless gender self-expression, to the point that Biden is avoiding the administration expressly the use of the term “woman” in official policy documents.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers, once owned by a conservative Catholic family, have publicly aligned themselves with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and much of America’s economy has “woken up.”
Bud Light’s collaboration with Dylan Mulvaney caused the company’s sales to drop by a quarter. Dylan Mulvaney/Instagram
A popular slogan on the right is “Who’s up, go broke,” but until a few weeks ago there was scant evidence to support this claim.
Attempts to organize consumer boycotts against “bright” products or companies, such as the NFL after Colin Kaepernick kneeled for the national anthem, mostly failed because they had little effect.
Then came the bud-light debacle, with Anheuser-Busch attempting to capitalize on the sensation of trans-celebrity “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney with a can made especially for Mulvaney with a special label, taking Mulvaney to extremes on Instagram and elsewhere welcomed.
A spontaneous boycott of Bud Light, once America’s best-selling brand, has reduced sales by more than a quarter since that failed move, and the loss of market share appears to be sustained.
Anheuser-Busch’s stock plummeted 15% and Bud Light cans sit unsold on shelves despite significant discounts, while sales of rival brands like Coors Light and Miller Lite have skyrocketed.
Barron’s reports that several analysts believe the departure from Bud Light could be permanent, making the targeted Mulvaney advertising potentially the biggest brand-killing marketing blunder since the Ayds diet plan in the 1980s.
Someone in Target’s marketing department apparently decided to say “hold my bud light” and emulate this consumer-alienating strategy.
A notable offering from the stores’ Pride Month line of products are “women’s” one-piece swimsuits with “tuck-friendly” features for fully equipped men who want to dress like women.
Target’s Pride collection also received some criticism. Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Another impromptu consumer boycott has begun, and Target’s stock price fell 10 straight days, down 15%, as the rest of the market began to climb, marking Wall Street’s worst performance in 23 years.
At the end of the week, JP Morgan downgraded Target’s stock.
The backlash against gender flexibility is not just limited to consumers.
Several Major League Baseball stars have publicly voiced criticism of the Dodgers, and there has been increasing backlash against anatomical males competing in women’s sporting events.
This moment seems different: A line has been crossed, and “normal” says “enough” because there is no better term for the traditional American middle class.
The long-term trend in American social life has been pushing the boundaries of individual expression and self-definition for decades.
Americans have generally been tolerant, if sometimes slow, of traits previously considered “deviant,” such as homosexuality, but also interracial marriage and women in the workplace.
It is worth noting that at the time of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015, public opinion was already supporting the idea, having been strongly opposed 20 years earlier.
But the current push to promote gender flexibility differs fundamentally from previous “liberation” movements, as it requires a wholesale denial of human nature itself and conformity to this radical view.
Target’s stock price fell 10 straight days, losing 15%. Getty Images
The new transgender movement not only wants to be tolerated or left alone, but insists on crossing all institutional and social boundaries, from the toilet to the gym to the elementary school classroom.
Americans have been largely tolerant of those previously described as “crossdressers,” but what explains the dogged insistence on putting on “drag queen” performances for children?
Why are dissident voices brutally repressed in the medical community when it comes to aggressive medical interventions on children whose brains and personalities, as we know, are far from fully developed?
It should be noted that what is euphemistically referred to as ‘gender-affirming care’ has recently been severely restricted in Europe.
With opinion polls showing that the majority of Americans oppose the premises of gender flexibility, we view the present moment as the riot of norms.
For American institutions that have given in to this extremism, perhaps we should say that Pride Month comes before fall.
Steven F. Hayward is an Assistant Scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.
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