June is Pride Month in the United States – a month when members of the LGBT communities can celebrate their identities without any shame or stigma. The month is increasingly also celebrated in the rest of the world.
And as gay rights have become more accepted, especially in the West, large companies have also expressed their support for LGBT people. In June this has seen many companies change their logos for the month to the colours of the Rainbow Flag, especially on social media. However, some sharp-eyed users of social media pointed out that companies that changed their colours to the rainbow colours on social media only did so for their accounts in Western countries, and not for those in the Middle East, where gay rights are not accepted nearly as widely.
Titania McGrath, a satirical Twitter account created by comedian Andrew Doyle which pokes fun at the worst excesses of ‘woke’ culture, pointed out the hypocrisy, sharing screenshots of the social media accounts of companies in the West compared to those representing their Middle Eastern branches.
Gay marriage is banned in most of the Arab World and most other Muslim-majority countries. Same-sex relationships are also illegal in a number of those countries, coming with the death penalty in some cases.
A number of commentators have pointed out that unless corporations also stand up for gay rights in places where gay people face actual persecution, their support of gay rights in the West rings hollow, and simply reflects corporations looking after their own interests.