On the menu today: You will be amazed at how many big U.S. and multinational corporations who are enthusiastically celebrating “Pride Month” have significant operations in countries that criminalize homosexuality. It’s not just China and Saudi Arabia, and it’s not just manufacturing in countries such as Pakistan or Indonesia. No, you’re going to be flabbergasted by which particularly controversial company at this moment has operations running in . . . Uganda, which just enacted what are probably the most anti-gay criminal laws on the planet. Corporate America gets to market to LGBT consumers stateside, and then turn around and make a bundle in some of the most anti-gay countries in the world, and apparently everyone is just fine with this systemic hypocrisy.
Words vs. Deeds during Pride Month
Up until a few days ago, in the country of Uganda, it was literally a crime to identify yourself as gay, lesbian, transgender, or nonbinary — a crime that carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Now, I don’t really care how you feel about gays or lesbians or anyone else, as long as you follow the law. Maybe you see nothing wrong with it at all. Maybe you find that way of living to be opposed to the Bible or some other holy teaching. I hope you treat everyone you encounter with kindness and respect, not because I think gays and lesbians deserve to be treated with kindness and respect, but because everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect. Lord knows, there aren’t enough of those virtues in this world.
But left, right, or center, I’d like to think that we could all agree that if you say, “I’m gay,” your government’s response should not be to put you in prison for two decades. (For perspective, here in the United States, as of 2016, “Persons sentenced for murder or non-negligent manslaughter served an average of 15 years in state prison before their initial release,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.)
Uganda modified its recent laws punishing homosexuality, and so it’s no longer a crime to say you’re gay. But it is still a crime to exhibit any form of homosexual desire:
Existing, colonial-era law in Uganda already allows life sentences for homosexuality, but no one has been convicted of consensual same-sex relations since the country gained independence from Britain in 1962. The new bill reaffirms that punishment and allows prison terms of up to five years for actions such as touching another person “with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.”
Uganda also kept the provision that included a “death sentence for what it calls ‘aggravated homosexuality,’ acts that include same-sex intercourse with a minor or an HIV-positive person convicted for the second time for intercourse with someone of the same gender.”
I think we can all agree that an adult having sex with a minor is a serious crime; here in the U.S., as of 2018, the average sentence for offenders convicted of statutory rape was 30 months. Hopefully we all agree that those who are HIV-positive have a responsibility to inform their partners and take appropriate precautions. But to enact the death penalty against HIV-positive Ugandans is almost absurd, as HIV has already been a de facto death penalty for roughly 1.4 million Ugandans since the advent of the virus. This is not all that far from criminalizing attempted suicide and then punishing it with the death penalty.
Even those with the most cursory knowledge about Uganda know the country faces some real problems. As the CIA World Factbook summarizes, Uganda “faces numerous challenges that could affect future stability, including explosive population growth, power and infrastructure constraints, corruption, underdeveloped democratic institutions, and human rights deficits.” Uganda ranks 166th out of 191 in the United Nations’ annual ranking of human development, 125th out of 139 countries on the rule of law, 142nd out of 180 in corruption, and 121st out of 163 in peace and stability, and ranked 115th out of 141 in pre-Covid economic competitiveness. Roughly one in five Ugandans lives below the poverty line. Roughly one in five children between the ages five and 14 are in the workforce instead of school. As of 2019, just 17 percent of the country’s rural areas had access to electricity. As the Factbook states, “Uganda is subject to armed fighting among hostile ethnic groups, rebels, armed gangs, militias, and various government forces that extend across its borders.”
And this is all separate from the Ebola-virus outbreak.
The heterosexuals of Uganda have their own major challenges as well:
“Except in urban areas, actual fertility exceeds women’s desired fertility by one or two children, which is indicative of the widespread unmet need for contraception, lack of government support for family planning, and a cultural preference for large families. High numbers of births, short birth intervals, and the early age of childbearing contribute to Uganda’s high maternal mortality rate.”
Add it all up, and Uganda looks like a deeply troubled country beset by poverty, instability, violence, lack of infrastructure, insufficient educational and economic opportunities, corruption, and ineffective government policies. And in this light, gay and lesbian Ugandans start to look like a very convenient scapegoat for the state. (For example, the challenges connected to the country’s high birthrate are really not the fault of the country’s gays and lesbians.)
With so many problems, you might wonder who would want to do business in a place like Uganda. The answer turns out to be quite a few multinationals: Coca-Cola, Unilever, Diageo, Citibank, Hilton and Sheraton hotel chains and . . . wait for it . . .
Anheuser-Busch InBev. Yes, the same company that is seeing plummeting sales of Bud Light over the perception that it jumped into the culture wars in the United States also operates breweries, factories, and distribution networks in a country that criminalizes homosexuality. Call me crazy, but I think I see some inconsistencies there.
So far, there is no sign that any U.S. or multinational company is rethinking its decisions to do business in Uganda, despite the country’s enactment of laws that will put a person in prison for five years for attempting to have homosexual sex.
You don’t have to look too far to find social or cultural conservatives who dislike or even seethe about “Pride Month,” as many chain stores suddenly put up giant rainbows in every display and window. It’s a free country, and you can feel about this phenomenon any way you like. But I’d argue that the most compelling objection to corporate America’s Pride Month is that it represents big companies’ support for the rights of gays in the cheapest and most consequence-free way possible.
For several years now, sharp-eyed observers have noticed that many multinational corporations add rainbows to their logos in the West, but keep them unchanged in the Middle East, where governments and the populaces are much less supportive of gay rights.
In Saudi Arabia, gay men get executed after their confessions are extracted during torture. The list of U.S. companies doing business in Saudi Arabia is like the Fortune 100.
Gays in China are subject to “censorship, surveillance and intimidation, at times even detention by police.” Just about every major multinational corporation operates in China and never speaks out against the policies of the Chinese government.
You know who’s got four “sourcing centers” located in China? Target. You know, the big box-store company that signed up a design company with a line of Satanist-inspired merchandise to help create the store’s 2023 “PRIDE” collection.
You know where else Target has a sourcing center? Karachi, Pakistan, where “same-sex sexual activity is prohibited under the Penal Code 1860, which criminalizes acts of ‘carnal knowledge against the order of nature’. This provision carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.”
Target also operates a sourcing center in Jakarta, Indonesia, where gay men get publicly flogged for violating Sharia law.
Big multinational corporations love standing up for gay rights, as long as it means more people buying their stuff. They are not interested in standing up for gay rights if it might cost them something.
Big American companies will throw their weight around in opposition to all kinds of state laws, from restrictions on explicit materials in school libraries to limitations on hormone treatments, but then turn around and avert their eyes from governments that literally execute people for being gay.
Disney objects to Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law. The company also has no problem staging “Disney on Ice” in Saudi Arabia. Not that long ago, a Saudi court sentenced a man to 450 lashes for “setting up a Twitter account to promote and practice homosexuality.”
What this demonstrates is that vast swaths of corporate America have no fundamental, principled objection to violent anti-gay views, as long as the profits are high enough. Apparently, c-suite executives’ real objection to the American opponents of gay rights is that they aren’t a sufficiently lucrative market.
And in this light, the gay and lesbian communities of the West look gullible, not triumphant.
Slapping a rainbow on the corporate logo on the website is the minimal-effort way to “support” the protection of the rights of gays and lesbians. It takes, what, five minutes for the graphics and website teams to do that? How much time and effort does it take for any clothing brand to put “PRIDE” on its shirts? How many of those “PRIDE” garments are actually created, sourced, assembled, or distributed in countries where it is illegal to have pride in being gay or lesbian?
The United States, and many countries, have seen dramatic changes in attitudes toward gays and lesbians over the course of my lifetime. There are still divisions and impassioned arguments. But I’d like to think that there’s a big, broad, bipartisan majority that believes that people shouldn’t be killed for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or anything else, and that nobody deserves to be put in prison for it, either. “Stop killing gay people for being gay” seems like a really reasonable request. And while the U.S. can’t control other countries or force them to adopt better human-rights policies, we do have a considerable amount of economic and diplomatic influence.
But exercising that influence would require U.S. and multinational corporations to reevaluate their existing business practices all over the globe, from Uganda to China to Saudi Arabia to Pakistan to Indonesia. And apparently, that’s just too darn inconvenient for boards of directors to even contemplate, much less actually do.
So, I would say no one should grind their teeth at the ubiquitous rainbows in store windows in June. When you see them, keep in mind that they’re the easiest, cheapest, shallowest, most minimally consequential way for big companies to appear to support gay rights, while never having to contemplate how they could actually stand up for some of the most oppressed people in the world.
ADDENDUM: Today is another National Review day on the Megyn Kelly Show, and Rich and I are scheduled to join the illustrious host.