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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Well, here we are on June 30th, the last day of Pride Month, and three days out since the pride protests and pride parades that usually mark the last weekend in June, and with the question more center stage than in most years, of which one of those two things, parades or protests, or what combination is best for the community and best for the world, for pride to actually be?

Let's get a take on how that all went and what it means from Zach Stafford, an MSNBC opinion columnist, who recently served as editor-at-large for BuzzFeed, was the first Black editor-in-chief of the big LGBTQ publication, The Advocate, and has worked as an investigative journalist at The Guardian. His two latest articles are called is Is Pride 2021 Forgetting Its Anti-police Violence Roots? and This Pride Month, LGBTQ People Deserve Gay Rights, Not a Temporary Logo. Zach, great to have you. Welcome to WNYC.

Zach Stafford: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here to talk to you about all these very gay things on our last day of Pride.

[laughter]

Brian: Indeed. Well, let's start on your temporary logo piece, and let's do the sort of fun part first, if that's okay. It starts with you saying, if you had walked around your local hometown Walmart as a kid and seeing a rainbow flag, you believe you would have come out earlier. What is your hometown, and what's the commercial scene that you're describing now as you referenced places like Arkansas and Texas in that piece?

Zach: I am from Tennessee. I'm from north of Nashville, on the Tennessee Kentucky border, and not a very big place. It's a town called Hendersonville within Sumner County. In southern cities, in southern counties, Walmart's our town squares, they are the center of the local community. When I was writing this piece, I thought back to what would have been like in 1995, walking through the Walmart, the one Walmart in my town, and to see a rainbow flag. Because where I'm from, even to this day, people aren't really talking about LGBTQ folks in a big way.

Due to Walmart's, for instance, having such a big grasp on our communities, I know for a fact if I would have saw that affirming kind of paraphernalia, it would have changed how I saw myself in the world. Because in the '90s, I definitely didn't see myself in a big way, in markets, or on TV, or in all these other ways. For me, I think about that. I'm like, if I would have saw a rainbow, I don't know, key chain or flag hanging, I maybe would have thought about myself a bit different.

Brian: For the uninitiated, or those not shopping in person again, yet, what kind of array of products are you seeing out there? You mentioned, for example, a gender-inclusive rainbow suit set from Target. I don't even know what that means. What is that, and what else are you seeing?

Zach: Well Brian, I think you need one. That's what we're getting to today.

[laughter]

Zach: I remember talking about there, as Target famously rolls out pride gear every year. They famously have a-- it's a short sleeve suit set, so it's like a suit but it's short sleeves, and it's all rainbow. We've seen every company kind of use a rainbow logo, a rainbow aesthetic across different products. Whether it's a water bottle, marijuana, baby toys, everything. It literally feels like if you have a product, like a crock, you're going to put a rainbow on it for June.

Which is now, I feel, becoming even funnier these days. Even yesterday, one of the trending topics on Twitter all day was from IKEA, because IKEA debuted their pride couches, where they literally did an array of couches that were representative of the different parts of the LGBTQ community, which is really fascinating, because I've never heard anyone in my entire life ask for a rainbow couch, but you can get one at IKEA now.

Brian: Is it a rainbow couch, or is it different colors of upholstery and you choose one depending on what slice you're trying to identify with?

Zach: [laughs] I haven't seen all of them, but I think there's about 8 or 10, and there are different ones that represent the trans flag, the bisexual flag, different aspects of the community, and they invited artists to create couches that represent those segments of the larger LGBTQ community. They're really cool, but it's just an example of literally every brand has their way into doing a product for Pride.

Brian: In the context of all of that in your article, you get quickly to the point that these displays mean nothing if the same stores and other companies are privately funding legislation or politicians, that would deny you equal rights. Who's doing that two-face stance?

Zach: We found out recently through reporting from Popular Information, a really wonderful newsletter, that over $10 million has been given to anti-LGBTQ politicians and legislative efforts around the country. This has been largely led by companies like AT&T, Walmart, CVS. These companies, these multinational companies do a huge pride campaign every year.

Walmart specifically has launched a Pride and Joy site for their walmart.com site, that has all their pride paraphernalia everywhere, but what we found out through this reporting that at the same time as they were launching the site, they were also giving money to legislators in Arkansas who were banning life-saving and life-affirming care for young trans kids.

What we're seeing through these products is a contradiction that these companies are rolling out rainbow this, rainbow that, but also very secretly funding efforts that don't allow for LGBTQ people to have full equity.

Brain: To take Walmart as as an example, and they're based in Arkansas, you cite a study that found they donated $43,000 to state lawmakers instrumental in passing anti-LGBTQ bills before they began to roll out their Pride merchandise this year. Do you notice they're donating to these politicians specifically to support anti-LGBTQ bills, or for some other reason that helps Walmart make money, but these happen to be the same people who push those bills, or does that distinction even matter?

Zach: I think it's more of the latter. I believe these corporations are donating to different Republican lawmakers probably for financial reasons around taxation, and different corporate protection laws. I don't think any of these companies, and we know for a fact, actually, many of these companies, because companies like CVS and AT&T have signed many memorandums to Congress in the past around LGBTQ equality.

We know that they do sign different efforts and put out letters to fight for rights, but there is this really weird grey zone where they are giving money to the very things that they are publicly saying they are against. I think for people like me, I think they should look at that, and make some bigger decisions around, is it worth having such a public face around LGBTQ protections and rights or is it actually valid that you put up these big platforms of inclusivity, while also giving real money to politicians to help create very bad legislation?

The Arkansas example is one that is very local. There was a bill there that the governor himself vetoed around gender-affirming care, and said, "This isn't right, we should let trans kids have access to this care," but the Republicans and the local legislation later pushed it through anyway. How they have access to funds to do that kind of campaigning was through corporations like Walmart. We see at the very local level, this money can go a long way, so I do believe they need to take a bigger step, and pull those funds if they are really fully for full equity.

Brian: You remind us in the article that there are examples of this, like after North Carolina passed its anti-trans bathroom bill a few years ago, some companies took moral action, like PayPal canceled plans to open a facility in the state. Companies like Walmart and CVS aren't going to close all their stores in Arkansas, and Texas, or the other 29 states by your account, that are considering some kind of anti-LGBT legislation right now, but they could do the kind of thing you just said.

Let me get on to your other article, which came out on Pride Day on Sunday, hooked to the controversy over whether to allow LGBTQ police officers to march in a group under that banner while in uniform. You really frame it in an even a larger context than that, which is, is Pride about celebrating identity, or is Pride about protesting police brutality and other forms of discrimination? How much do you see it as an either or?

Zach: I think there should always be room for joy within any movement, whether it's Black Lives Matter, or the LGBTQ rights movement, or other civil rights movements, but I think we also have to keep the the heart of these movements and these moments of protests at the core or at the center of what we do. With the pride marches and LGBTQ rights movement about the 1990's, it seems as if we took this great left turn and forgot that for decades we were fighting for very real rights of just walking down the street or even being able to have a partner.

Then in the past 10 years, if you'd looked at these Pride marches, you would think everything is solved, that marriage equality passed, and we're done with that work, but as we see through this legislation I've been talking about, like in Arkansas, or even the epidemic of trans women getting murdered, there's still a lot of work to do, and that work is still central or centered around our relationship to the state itself.

Police brutality, as we've seen with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement is still a vital part of this country's effort to bring full equality to everyone. I think due to Pride being so massive, and that we have seen it go so mainstream, it would behoove us as a movement to ensure that the core of it, that it started because of police brutality, was central. Especially when we see efforts around George Floyd and other movements around the country to bring up other similarities around police and state violence.

Brian: In fact, you tell a story of being a reporter covering the 2015 Pride parade in Chicago, when right after the Supreme Court's decision affirming same-sex marriage rights, it had all the ingredients of being the biggest celebration of Pride and yet it became the opposite. Can you tell that story?

Zach: Yes. In 2015, I was with The Guardian and everyone was covering the biggest story of the year, which was full marriage equality. When I was in Chicago covering this, it was I think, two million people on the streets and it was a very joyous occasion, but the parade got stopped and this is a year after Mike Brown was shot in Ferguson, and a group of Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted the parade and they wanted to do a demonstration to remind people that marriage is great, this is wonderful, but we still have a lot of work to do around the real violence people are facing due to the police.

For me at the time, it was really sad to see that the people there viewing the parade, or yelling at these protesters, they were saying, "How dare you ruin Pride? How dare you do this to us?", and they didn't see the efforts for Black people as the same as LGBTQ rights. As a Black LGBTQ person, I live in that intersection, I want to see more of that conversation happen and it just wasn't there.

Ever since then, we haven't seen it really go there, and in the past few years, in New York City specifically, we've seen a new march form called the Queer Liberation March, which sits at that intersection, that is trying to take over the traditional pride parade so that we have a more intersectional conversation around whose rights are getting fully fulfilled and who's not.

Brian: In fact, you write that when you were covering that or that experience covering that Chicago parade for The Guardian, changed you forever. Can you describe why it was so profound?

Zach: I think for me as a Black person, I saw where parts of me may always, or may be able to move quicker in terms of this pathway for equity, while other parts of me within America may always stay at a standstill. I think at that time, I saw some data quickly after that showed that the national acceptance around LGBTQ marriages, same-sex marriages, moved faster to a majority accepting it than interracial marriage, which passed in the '60s.

I am a child of an interracial marriage and seeing in that moment in the parade that my Blackness or my mixness was going to take even longer to be fully accepted in this country than maybe my queerness, or at least my gay maleness, being a gay man that marries another man, was really shocking to me and showed me there's lots of work to do, and that we need to have a little bit more complicated conversations about what is the civil rights movement aiming to go to, and who's going to be centered that month.

Brian: Specifically on the controversy that had broken out about whether LGBTQ police officers could march as a group or in uniform as one of the contingents, you cite The New York Times changing its position on that issue, not once, but twice in the run-up to Pride weekend. Can you give us the brief history of that as you read it and what it represents beyond what some individuals at The Times may be thinking?

Zach: Yes. There has been a lot of efforts within local activists that organize all the pride parades around, should police be involved in and should they not? Local organizers banned a uniformed police, meaning police could be there, they just can't be in their uniform. The New York Times editorial board put out a piece saying that that was wrong, that that was discrimination. Then quickly after that, there was another piece by Roxane Gay that contradicted that, and then we saw other pieces at The Washington Post and Jonathan Capehart saying they should be accepted.

We saw even with the larger media, a conversation where no one could agree and everyone was like, yes, no, yes, maybe, maybe not. I think that shows you the different places in which we all come into this conversation as LGBTQ people. People think of us as a monolith, but due to being queer, and people of color, and poor people, and all these other things, we all are very different and have different ways of talking about these things. I think that flip-flopping showed maybe we shouldn't be treating LGBTQ as that monolith, but as a community that does transcend through all communities, and from there, maybe we can have more productive conversations about this in terms of identity politics.

Because today, we still see, like even my own colleagues who are at MSNBC, we all don't agree. I think that's great. I think that's a wonderful thing, but I just hope that we can continue this conversation moving forward. For me, at the end of the day, when you look at the history of Pride, it began due to police brutality across this country, from New York to San Francisco, to LA. Even The Advocate, the magazine I used to run, started in 1968 because police raided a bar in LA. I don't think it's good for us to forget that history and that's the bedrock to our movement, and I think we should all talk about it more.

Brian: Maybe if media of good faith are presenting various points of view in a conversation like this, maybe that's a good thing as we work things out in society through these public conversations. In our last minute, I guess one pro-police marching in uniform argument was that maybe it's good to support an out and organized LGBTQ affinity group within police departments because it reinforces their strength as a player at the table for improving police behavior toward LGBTQ people and others, and it shouts, "Yes, we are a group within police departments, as within all institutions of power now." Any sympathy for that?

Zach: I go back and forth on that. I'm a person, I grew up in Tennessee, and I have family members that are officers, and I've been reporting about cops for a decade now. I deal with this on a very personal level at the dinner table, but for me, with these affinity groups within the police department, I would like to see more real tangible efforts of change to be displayed before I think my sympathy would get bigger. Even I see Black officers within these forces and Black officers lead some of these forces.

Like in Chicago, when I was a reporter there, the head of the police department was Black, but yet, Laquan McDonald happened. It's like we can have these positions, but we also can perpetuate the violence within the systems. I don't think just because they do have an affinity group means that they're pro-LGBTQ and I think that's what we're seeing here, the evidence of that.

Brian: Zach Stafford at MSNBC, opinion columnist, who also recently served as editor-at-large for BuzzFeed was the first Black editor-in-chief of the big LGBTQ publication, The Advocate, and has worked as an investigative journalist at The Guardian. Thanks so much for this conversation. I really, really appreciate it.

Zach: Thank you, Brian, it was good to be here.

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