Pride's Branding Crisis

When even rainbows aren't working

Aside from being Pride’s most tireless advocate, Kristyn Wong-Tam has also achieved notoriety in the expanding field of “Androgimaxxing.”

Due to the plummeting returns on corporate activism, high-roller sponsors such as Home Depot, Google, Nissan, and Clorox have all decided to pull their financial support for Pride, leaving a “funding gap” for this year’s festivities. No doubt the absence of Clorox wipes will also present a “sanitization gap” if previous parade antics are any metric to go on.

As a result, Pride organizers from across the country have requested a $9 million cash injection from the Federal government (i.e. taxpayers) to ensure that the noble legacy of grown men in diapers doing the stanky leg on the back of a flatbed can be preserved for generations to come. This, of course, on top of the millions of dollars they’re already getting. Rumor has it Toronto mayor Olivia Chow has personally threatened to inflict her Caribbean Carnival costume on the population if her demands are not met.¹

Explanations for the decline of interest are as varied as they are braindead, and include the rise of “far-right extremism,” tariffs, Trump, and the Venus-Jupiter conjunction taking place on June 9th.

No one wants to talk about the real reason, of course, which likely has more to do with the increasingly evident disparity between lgbt+ rhetoric and lgbt+ reality. For years we were scolded into believing Pride was about inclusion, diversity, and justice. What the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Tumbler Ridge shooting, drag story times, and the rising number of transition malpractice lawsuits actually reveal is that Pride is to social justice as a disk mulcher is to a family of shrews loitering in tall grass.

In other words, Pride seems to be experiencing something of a branding crisis.

And I’m 100% here for it.

Evil’s true nature

Why does Pride need millions of dollars to operate? Ostensibly, to cover “security, artists fees, logistics costs and rising budget items.” The deeper reason is because millions of dollars is what it costs to remediate, or at least neutralize, its sheer concentration of moral degeneracy.

See, God has built a kind of principle into the world where the better something is, the less adornment it requires. There’s a reason Jesus said the lilies of the field were dressed finer than Solomon in all his splendor. There’s a reason white remains the most popular colour for weddings. There’s a reason aged ribeye steak needs only the barest suggestion of salt and pepper to taste delicious. There’s a reason Chesterton defines the spectacle of bare tree branches against a pale winter sky is “luxuriantly indefinable to an unusual degree.”

Goodness doesn’t have to fear the relative “nakedness” required by elegance. It has nothing to hide. There are no skeletons in its closet. There is no botox under its skin.

And the inverse is true. There’s a reason Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. There’s a reason corruption loves to luxuriate in fetid carnivals of bureaucracy. And there’s a reason Pride ceremonies are so pervasively gaudy. The worse something is, the more elaborate its disguise has to be. The closer evil appears as its true self, the more apparent its ugliness will be.

God has so made the world that the nature of a thing is difficult to hide indefinitely. This is especially true where evil is concerned. Its best hope is to gradually sear the conscience of everyone around it so that when the mask finally falls off, everyone is already acclimatized to ugliness. Still, much like Simon Cowell’s perfectly-plumpened face, it exists in a precarious state. One exaggerated gesture — one careless laugh — and the whole thing could collapse onto itself.

Consider the sheer volume of propaganda and machinery it took to maintain the illusion of the USSR’s “workers paradise.” And how quickly a single disaster blew the whole thing away.

One little word

As Christians, the inherent instability of evil should hearten us.

In contrast to evil’s fluctuating fortunes, we are receiving a kingdom that can’t be shaken. Whose foundations, established by blood, go down to the very roots of the cosmos. It should also hearten us because, in Luther’s words, “One little word shall fell him.” In context of the hymn, this line is referring to the utter ease by which Satan will ultimately be overthrown. Christ will speak and his reign will evaporate like a late-stage soap bubble.

But we might easily extend the felling power of little words to our own time.

In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Count Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin is one day informed by his wife, Anna, that she is leaving him. Over time, he becomes convinced, contrary to the principles of his faith, that divorcing her is the only option left to him. He spends weeks mastering every argument and positioning every counter-argument. But in the end, it only takes his blubbering, overly-sentimental sister-in-law to stammeringly remind him of the weight of his covenant. In an instant — in a word — the vast architecture of his position is overcome.

That’s how fragile sin is.

At the end of the day, we don’t know if these few pebbles are the beginning of a landslide or simply tremors of a groaning creation. Whether they be few or many, we know Pride’s days are numbered. The only question is — at what point do we not interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake?

1. You’ll have to look this one up yourself. No way I’m going back there.