Is S.F. Pride having an identity crisis in the age of Trump?

San Francisco Chronicle​

a day ago

For many in the LGBTQ community, it's a complicated year to celebrate Pride. More than five decades after the first San Francisco parades, the direction of the annual celebration feels suddenly uncertain and queer identity itself is more political than ever during President Donald Trump's second term.
With corporate sponsorships declining, rainbow Pride flags being banned in some cities and anti-transgender legislation and Supreme Court rulings steadily accumulating, there are calls to reevaluate the role Pride festivities should play amid what seems to be the deliberate destruction of established civil rights.
'This is not a normal time,' said LGBTQ activist Cleve Jones, 'and for people to just continue to act as we have, year after year, without acknowledging the gravity of the situation is mind-boggling.'
Recent decades have seen Pride Month become a season of commemorating queer history and advancing equality. In San Francisco, the parade and Civic Center celebrations are among the oldest Pride events in the world.
But in the face of rising hostility from the Trump administration and other conservative voices, as well as a retreat by corporate backers, San Francisco's LGBTQ community is reexamining the event.
Jones, the onetime protégé of San Francisco's pioneering gay politician Harvey Milk, first attended the Gay Freedom Day Parade (as S.F. Pride was formerly known) in 1973. Competing visions of what became the annual celebration, he said, have existed for years.
'On one hand, you've got the crowd that says, 'Stonewall was a riot. We don't want cops, we don't want corporate sponsorships, let's make it more of a march and keep it political,'' he said, referring to the seminal 1969 confrontation between gay rights activists and police at the Stonewall Inn in New York's Greenwich Village. 'And then on the other side, you've got people that really would like to see Beyoncé perform, and want the stage and the sound system to go with it.'
As the 2025 edition approached, the discussion took on more urgency as six sponsors — including Google, Anheuser-Busch, Comcast and Nissan — dropped their support, while others gave money quietly and asked not to be named, said San Francisco Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford. In one notable case, S.F. Pride officials chose to sever ties with Meta as a sponsor due to the social media company's rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and its loosening of content moderation.
In the midst of the Trump administration's war on DEI, the corporate withdrawals from S.F. Pride aren't surprising, and its funding situation is not unique. Pride events in cities including Sacramento, Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis are reporting budget shortfalls due to dropped sponsorships and grants, while New York's Heritage of Pride is fundraising to narrow a $750,000 budget gap.
'We're much better off than New York Pride,' Ford said of the East Coast organization that reportedly lost 25% of its corporate funding.
But she acknowledges that even with S.F. Pride bringing in additional donors this year — 10% of sponsors are new, including the San Francisco Foundation and San Francisco International Airport — the decline in corporate sponsorships has impacted its budget. The organization is short $180,000 from its $2.3 million fundraising target.
'If we, somehow, in these next 10 days, can find another $175,000, and people show up on Pride Sunday, and our beverage program does well and our donations increase at the gate, we might get through this difficult period,' Ford said.
D'Arcy Drollinger, the city's first drag laureate, noted that since the 1990s, corporate sponsorship has been more prominent at Pride events across the world. That money provided for both bigger production values in the parade and on stages. In San Francisco, those sponsorships helped keep the event free.
'Even before the term 'woke' existed, it was seen as good street cred for a brand to be part of Pride,' said Drollinger, who in 2024 hosted and programmed a stage in Civic Center through his nonprofit Oasis Arts.
But financial support from companies spanning tech, banking, medicine and other industries has long had a mixed response. Drollinger said the community can contradict itself at times on the issue.
'Last year we saw some people say, 'F— these corporations trying to pinkwash! '' Drollinger said, referring to a term for pandering to LGBTQ consumers while not supporting them in more significant ways. 'And then this year, 'Where are all the corporations? No one's supporting us.''
That tension between needing resources and questioning their sources is something Devlin Shand believes the community must confront more directly. The co-founder of LGBTQ gallery Queer Arts Featured sees Pride's current crossroads as an opportunity for deeper reflection.
'If you get in bed with big money, with the people that are destroying our planet, if you can dissociate from that understanding, then you get your big VIP Pride experience,' Shand said. 'This could be a wake-up call.'
As the fight to preserve LGBTQ rights intensifies, some question whether the current Pride model is still right for this moment. Is celebrating appropriate while transgender protections are under attack, marriage equality is once again under debate and LGBTQ immigrants face renewed threats?
S.F. Pride's theme this year, 'Queer Joy Is Resistance,' tries to bridge the protest vs. party conflict. But for Jones, the words ring hollow.
'That slogan would make a little more sense if the website would include even two words about what exactly are we resisting,' said Jones, who also believes that the community needs to reevaluate what constitutes political action. In his view, resistance in 2025 'requires us to do more than party on as usual.'
'I feel very heavily what's happening — how we're trying not to be erased, how our rights are being stripped away,' he said. Still, he added 'finding our joy is part of the fight.'
Others think the theme strikes the right balance, reflecting both the spirit of celebration and the deeper work happening during Pride weekend to support organizations and causes important to the LGBTQ community.
Juanita More, a longtime fundraiser in San Francisco's queer scene, will once again host her annual party on Pride Sunday at 620 Jones, this year benefiting the Transgender Law Center. Since 2004, the drag performer has raised more than $1 million for LGBTQ community groups, with much of that support coming from small businesses and private donors. She believes offering a space for release — especially amid political grief and fatigue — is as crucial as creating opportunities for action.
'I'm glad they used the word joy,' More said. 'We have to find joy to keep moving forward.'
While More's Pride party has become a tradition, she's also helped launch an event that's now seen as a symbol of the community's return to grassroots activism.
In 2020, More and activist Alex U. Inn created the People's March, which traces the original Gay Freedom Day route down Polk Street to City Hall. The event was a response to the racial reckoning the country faced after the murder of George Floyd, but also an opportunity for people to come together in a year when the Pride Parade was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In past years, the People's March was scheduled on Pride Sunday, portraying itself as a non-corporate sponsored alternative.
Tina Aguirre, director of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, is a supporter of the People's March and said that event, as well as the Trans March on Pride Friday and Dyke March on Pride Saturday, 'are all strong indicators that not only do we still need to come together and celebrate, we also need to march because our rights keep getting taken away.'
This year, the People's March was on June 19 and had an estimated 1,200 participants. Now, for the first time, it will also have its own contingent in the Pride Parade.
'I totally support S.F. Pride,' More said. 'We have the same goals, but we've gone about it in different ways. Now it's a mutual feeling about what's happening across the country, that we all need to work together.'
For her part, Honey Mahogany, a local Democratic activist and drag performer, will host a stage at the Civic Center party this year with Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Mahogany called San Francisco a historic incubator for the queer movement and as such, 'we're used to having all of these factions that don't really coordinate or talk to each other. But it's my hope that we will start doing more coordinating and coalition building, and less exclusion and finger pointing.'
That spirit of collaboration extends beyond Pride Weekend.
Rebecca Rolfe, outgoing executive director of the SF LGBT Center, said she plans to march with her nonprofit's contingent in the parade. While she has noticed an increased demand for services at the center dealing with issues such as immigration status and proper gender on government IDs as well as 'a generalized increase in anxiety,' she's also seen an upswing in people interested in volunteering. But she believes queer organizations have their work cut out for them as San Francisco continues to try and live up to its reputation as a sanctuary city for transgender and nonnbinary people.
As for the future of S.F. Pride, Ford just signed a two-year contract to remain in her role leading Pride, and she said she hopes to hire a development director to help find new sources of funding.
She's confident, with help from Mayor Daniel Lurie, Pride Week can again become a destination for the city.
'It's even more important than ever that San Francisco accept that we are the capital of the queer world,' said Ford, citing the importance of investing in the festivities' infrastructure. 'We shouldn't be running away from it, we should be running into it.'