COMMENT - The rainbow flags are being rolled up. That's a good thing

What hasn't been invested in this colorful declaration in recent years? Every June, it was that time again. Companies unfurled the rainbow flag over their building facades and colored their internet accounts with it. In full-page newspaper advertisements, the major corporations jointly asserted that "everyone" was welcome at their company – no matter who they were, no matter whom they loved.

Universities hoisted the flag from their gables. Cosmetics companies designed their products in rainbow designs, bakeries stuck small colored paper flags on toothpicks into their rolls. Football stadiums were illuminated in the colors of the rainbow, as was the case with the Munich Arena during two off-days of last year's European Football Championship.

The media offered an accompanying program by portraying trans people on their path to finding their gender identity or by pointing out the hurdles that same-sex couples who want to have children still have to overcome.

Now, verbal and nonverbal statements about diversity and inclusion have not completely disappeared from public spaces these days. It's Pride Month, in which the queer community worldwide celebrates its diversity and demonstrates for greater visibility.

But this year, enthusiasm from the business community has been muted to nonexistent. This is reflected in more than just the rainbow. Two major long-standing sponsors of Zurich Pride, which takes place this weekend, have dropped out. This means CHF 150,000 less for the festival.

The financial support of international companies like UBS and Google is also apparently at risk. Organizers fear this. They also reported many rejections of sponsorship requests this year. The same is being said about Pride festivals from Berlin to New York.

The mood has changed, and even if the former sponsors aren't saying so officially, one reason for this is the policies of Donald Trump, who has declared the woke zeitgeist over. Under pressure from Trump, companies are scrapping their diversity programs. Even an appearance at Switzerland's most shrill, colorful, and loudest party no longer fits.

It only took a change of power in the United States to abandon the causes that had previously distinguished it. In recent years, identity politics has dominated social discourse to such an extent that everyone wanted to participate. Because it was the discourse of the good guys in the fight for social justice. As a result, at universities, in companies, and in politics, identity counted more than excellence: In many places, achievement became secondary; having the right background, skin color, and gender was enough.

The business turnaround is evidence of opportunism. This was often already evident in the way international companies carefully considered which countries they displayed their logos in rainbow colors during Pride Month. Many knowingly refrained from doing so in countries where homosexuals are prosecuted and tortured and killed—making their commitment all the more necessary.

In the West, however, it no longer required courage to show solidarity with the queer community via the rainbow. Rather, there was a sense of compulsion to participate in the annual folklore. As if one might be suspected of being against tolerance and diversity if one didn't do so.

Thus, diversity degenerated into an end in itself, and the term became a platitude the more demonstrative a commitment to it was made. The end of "Regenbogization," as "TAZ" author Jan Feddersen once called it, is therefore to be welcomed.

The LGBTQ community should fundamentally see it this way, too. They themselves have always criticized so-called pinkwashing and dismissed the business community's commitment to queer causes as pure PR to increase profits: They highlight their own virtues once a year, then sit back and do nothing for inclusion and equality for eleven months.

There's a certain irony: Trump is credited with ending the economic hypocrisy that so bothered the queer community.

But it's not true that companies in Switzerland, Germany, or the USA don't care about values ​​like diversity and equal opportunity. Rather, given the current shift away from demonstrating commitment to gay and transgender people, one must conclude that equality and inclusion are a given in the vast majority of companies. That's why the raising of the rainbow flag in recent years has been so paradoxical.

Even if companies no longer participate in Pride as sponsors, that does not mean that they will exclude transgender people from job applications in the future or that gay people have to fear bullying in the workplace.

Swisscom, one of the two sponsors that pulled out of Zurich Pride, emphasizes that its decision had nothing to do with a change in the company's values. The pharmaceutical company Gilead also told the NZZ that, despite withdrawing from the queer festival, it continues to stand for "excellence, inclusion, integrity, and teamwork." Anything else would have been surprising.

A culture of tolerance and respect is now a top priority in companies and universities. It won't end just because Trump demands that money be stopped for training courses that treat employees like children, as if they've never heard of the importance of being kind to colleagues. Moreover, even experts doubt whether such awareness programs actually work.

The same is true of rainbows in public spaces, which often trigger defensive reactions in many people. It's not up to cosmetics companies to impose their views on social issues on consumers. As consumers, you just want to use a face cream or body lotion that's hopefully worth the money, and not be lectured on how to improve the world.

Companies felt the financial consequences of pandering to wokeness ideology even before Trump. Customers retaliated by boycotting their products. Sales of the lingerie label Victoria's Secret plummeted when it hired more overweight and transgender models under pressure from LGBTQ activists. Fashion company Calvin Klein featured a pregnant trans man in its 2022 advertising campaign and received a backlash. Sales of the beer brand Bud Light plummeted in 2023 when the manufacturer turned to a transgender influencer.

The peak of a movement that was becoming increasingly radical seems to have passed. Much of the hype surrounding ever-new sexual identities, in which the media participated as activists, seems strange today. After Nemo's Eurovision victory, journalists compiled glossaries on how to address a nonbinary person. It was only a year ago.

The gender discourse became dogmatic: The demand for tolerance was characterized by intolerance. A minority demanded that the majority adapt to it. This alienated even people who supported the idea behind diversity and who took it for granted that everyone should live as they wish, as long as they did not infringe on the freedom and rights of others.

The ideologization of the movement is leaving even queer people who want to live inconspicuously and quietly behind. Valerie Wilms, the first transgender woman in the German Bundestag, has therefore resigned from the Green Party. In her autobiography, "My Two Lives," she takes a stand against the woke zeitgeist.

Dani Sophia, the young guitarist of Rammstein singer Till Lindemann, is also transgender and recently criticized Pride Month on Instagram. She doesn't want to "wave flags in the streets," she wrote, but simply "play guitar and live my life": "I don't need people holding parades for me. I don't need Capitol buildings with big Pride flags flying. I don't need limited-edition rainbow Apple Watch bands or rainbow snow globes."

Both are concerned that, with regard to the US and Trump, after years of excessive identity politics, the mood could shift toward a new hostility toward people like them. Even waving the rainbow flag would do little to counteract this.

Despite the waning enthusiasm of politicians, businesspeople, and the public, the colorful party can still be celebrated exuberantly, both here and there. This point demonstrates how much queer culture has achieved and how many of its values ​​have prevailed without having to invoke them at every opportunity. Beyond woke dogma, a normalization is taking place.