On a clear June day in 2017, two million people lined the route of the Newn York Pride Parade to cheer as floats sponsored by Deutsche Telekom,n Nissan, Facebook, and Toronto-Dominion Bank went by. Marchers wearingn #Resistance T-shirts led the way, followed by ranks of New York’s Finestn marching before a Corrections Department van painted in rainbow colors.n Trojan brand ambassadors threw condoms to the crowd like candy. Even then children stretched out their hands.
n All seemed to be well—until twelve members of a group called No Justice, Non Pride blockaded the parade. In front of the Stonewall Inn, the Lexingtonn and Concord of gay liberation, they denounced the parade for having becomen “the world’s longest Super Bowl commercial break,” glorifying an economicn system inimical to LGBT rights. Police hustled the protestors into an Corrections Department van (sans rainbow). The parade went on.n
n The New York Pride Parade is an overwhelming display of establishmentn power. As the head of the Human Rights Campaign said in 2006, “Corporaten America is far ahead of America generally when it comes to the question ofn equality for GLBT people.” Large corporations donate to LGBT causes, lobbyn against religious freedom laws, and present gay people as avatars ofn consumerism.n
n Liquor brands led the way. In 1981, Absolut became the first major brand ton target gay consumers, whom it viewed as trendsetters. Travel, financial,n and fashion companies followed suit, making the rainbow flag the banner ofn carefree cosmopolitanism and unbounded consumption. Fr. James Martin,n S.J., a prominent LGBT advocate and self-described capitalist, displays anrainbow-colored Absolut bottle in his office along with his Spiritual Exercises and an image of Christ.n
n When the Supreme Court took up Obergefell v. Hodges, 379n businesses, including McKinsey, Bain, Goldman Sachs, Google, and Morgann Stanley, submitted an amicus brief. They argued: “Allowing same-sexn couples to marry improves employee morale and productivity,” whichn contributes to “significant returns for our shareholders and owners.”n There’s money to be made in gay rights.n
n Large global firms are especially supportive of the LGBT cause. Darel Paul,na political scientist at Williams College, records in his book From Tolerance to Equality that in 2010, 75 percent of the 1,000n largest firms in the U.S. mandated nondiscrimination for sexualn orientation. Among the Fortune 500, it was 89 percent. These corporationsn set the standard on LGBT rights—then impose that standard on others. Whenn Indiana, Arizona, and Georgia moved to implement religious freedom bills,n corporations threatened a capital strike. As Delta put it, such laws weren inconsistent with the ethic of “a global values-based company.”n
n So there is something quaint in the way the Pride Parade blockadersn rejected the fusion of corporate interests and the LGBT cause. A similarn denial can be found on the right. Leading conservatives celebrate then “creative destruction” wrought by firms like Apple and Uber, even thoughn one of the things those firms have creatively destroyed is the idea ofn marriage that conservatives hold dear.n
As Peter Kolozi argues in Conservatives Against Capitalism, then unwillingness of the right to criticize corporations is relatively new.n Until World War II, conservative thinkers like the Southern Agrarians andn conservative politicians like Teddy Roosevelt mounted vigorous critiquesn of unfettered capital and viewed corporations as political agents thatn needed to be called to account.
n That changed in 1945, with the beginning of the Cold War and thenserialization of Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in Reader’s Digest. Free markets became identified with Christiann faith and American arms in the struggle against godless communism. Thisn identification became fusionist orthodoxy. Cultural conservatives sought ton direct capitalism toward moral ends, hoping the market would disciplinen Americans into developing “bourgeois virtues.” Lowering the top marginaln tax rate was supposed to promote thrift and hard work.n
n In fact, these policies promoted a less traditional set of values. The mainn beneficiary of the economic policies championed by conservatives has been an managerial class that prefers sexual liberation to the austerities of then Protestant ethic. This class is more secular, more progressive, and moren privileged than the rest of America. Its members have enjoyed growingn incomes as the incomes of working-class Americans have stagnated. They haven benefited from globalization and support free trade.n
n Pride parades are festivals of this class’s faith. They present globaln corporations as the breakers of boundaries—national and moral. Ravinan Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Human Rights Office,n summed up the worldview of this class when she defended the manufacture ofn gay pride apparel in overseas sweatshops: “Making pride T-shirts in a placen where homosexuality is illegal could be considered a way of making inroadsn toward more human rights.” Free trade meets free love.n
n Various populists have begun to challenge this faith. Bernie Sandersn shocked the liberal writer Ezra Klein by denouncing open borders as a “Kochn brothers proposal . . . which says essentially there is no United States.”n He drew the ire of pro-abortion activists for saying that Plannedn Parenthood was “part of the establishment” he opposed. On the day of then Carrier deal announcement, Mike Pence scandalized conservative writers byn saying, “The free market has been sorting it out and America has beenn losing.” Trump chimed in, “Every time. Every time.”n
These are the culture war’s true battle lines. On one side are well-scrubbedn members of the managerial class who believe that any constraint on the freen movement of labor, goods, and capital is a violation of “global values.”n They are fully committed to the central project of neoliberalism: then insulation of markets from democratic pressure. They also wish to protectn desire from any legal, cultural, or moral restraint. On the other side aren unwashed people of varying political stripes who intuit that economic lifen should be subject to political authority, which today rests in the nation.n They believe in moral norms and national boundaries.
n Christians need to practice cultural realpolitik. No explanation of then meaning of marriage, however rigorously argued or scrupulously secular,n can overcome the power of a managerial elite that is wholly opposed to then kind of society for which Christians hope. Refusal to see this has beenn fatal to the traditionalists’ cause. While arguing against liberal socialn changes, they have cheered economic policies that harm their natural alliesn and aid their opponents. They have handed a shovel to their ownn gravedigger.n
n Progressives now stand with global capital, as the Pride Parade so clearlyn shows. Christians in turn should stand with the working class, which isn more religious, more diverse, and more patriotic than the managerial elite.n Only by reducing inequality and restraining corporations can Christiansn avoid being buried. Only by challenging the ideology of free markets andn open borders can they advance their view of the common good. The strugglen between woke capital and the working class will determine the outcome ofn the culture war.n
Matthew Schmitz is senior editor of First Things and a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.
Photo via the Empire State Building.
