Every June, global brands undergo a far too familiar transformation. Corporate logos acquire rainbow colours, social media avatars are updated, marketing campaigns rewritten, and shop windows, email signatures and advertising slogans suddenly begin speaking the language of diversity and inclusion. The annual ritual raises an interesting question: what exactly is being celebrated during Pride Month – beyond virtue signalling? And why are so many institutions so eager to participate?
Even the word “pride” is poetically striking. In the Christian tradition, pride is not understood as a virtue but as the vice from which all others flow. It was pride that lay at the heart of the Fall: the desire to define oneself apart from God, to become self-creating rather than creature, to reject the given in favour of the chosen. The irony is difficult to ignore.
