Utah Gov. Spencer Cox broke with his party this week as the only Republican governor to make a statement in response to what some celebrate as Pride Month during the month of June.
But he also broke from his own custom. Instead of officially declaring June “Pride Month” — as he had his first three years in office — Cox released a simple message, similar to last year’s declaration, about the importance of seeking unity and compassion.
“This June I’m reflecting on the values that bring us together here in Utah — service, respect, and love for our neighbor," Cox said in a post on X. “To those celebrating Pride and to all Utahns: may we keep building bridges of understanding and strive always to see the humanity in one another.”
As has become a common feature of the polarized discourse on social media, Cox’s statement earned the ire of LGBTQ activists, for not officially recognizing Pride Month, and conservative influencers, for acknowledging the occasion at all.
While it may have failed to please partisans on both sides of the spectrum, the governor’s message might point to a better way to strengthen a pluralistic society, according to Paul Edwards, director of the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University.
A focus on personal bridge-building can transcend the conflict between divisive diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that amplify identity politics, and a rigid affirmation of traditional values that ignores cultural differences, Edwards said.
“It’s vital that we get this right because we do need to live together in some kind of peace,” Edwards said in an interview with the Deseret News. “And that is possible, probably in more ways than we sometimes believe.”
Pride Month meets the ‘vibe shift’
This year has seen a number of organizations — public and private — back away from their previously open endorsements of Pride Month celebrations.
The Utah Transit Authority will not participate in this year’s Pride parade for the first time since 2022 as part of a temporary hold to ensure “consistency and responsible stewardship of public funds,” according to a UTA spokesperson.
Likewise, the University of Utah has discontinued its official sponsorship of the downtown Salt Lake City Pride celebration, which it had supported for “several years,” according to a university spokesperson.
The university will still encourage students to join its entry in the parade and continues to hold a “Pride Week” every spring while students are on campus, featuring a fundraising “gayla” and “Drag Bingo.”
These changes in Pride participation follow a series of steps taken by state lawmakers to restrict some transgender treatments for minors, prevent exclusionary DEI practices at government entities and prohibit most flags in public schools.
But they also come amid what some are proclaiming a “vibe shift‚" or cultural realignment away from socially liberal stances.
After years of touting their support of Pride, corporations like Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and Nissan have pulled funding from Pride festivals across the country; organizations like Target have swapped rainbow decorations for American flags; and the Trump administration has officially declared June “Title IX Month.”
“There’s a massive vibe shift,” anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck told the Deseret News. “The public-facing things they used to do like Pride logos on their social media, or company-wide emails are no longer happening.”
Policy changes like this can be attributed to a backlash among Americans, many of them parents, who believe “symbols matter” when it comes to the places they will spend their money, according to Starbuck.
But, he acknowledged, it is also the result of partisan activism, like his own, that verbally attacks, shames and boycotts organizations for taking a public position on an increasingly politicized issue.
This year Starbuck has mobilized a group of supporters to film Pride parades around the country to document “inappropriate behavior that occurs in view of children” and then to link the events to the companies sponsoring them.
“What you tolerate, in many ways, becomes who you are,” Starbuck said. “However you bring about that change to bring something positive to the forefront, I don’t think that really matters.”
One state lawmaker, Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton, has drafted a bill for next session that would wield state power to discourage private organizations from announcing support of messages like Pride Month if they receive public subsidies.
Lee, the primary sponsor of the 2024 law banning political flags in classrooms and on government flagpoles, told the Deseret News the bill in its current form would make taxpayer dollars in public-private partnerships contingent on organizations remaining politically neutral.
Lee teased the legislation during a social media spat over the weekend where he criticized Pride Month posts from the Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth — both owned by Smith Entertainment Group which is set to receive nearly $1 billion in public funds to revitalize parts of downtown.
“This isn’t necessarily about Pride,” Lee said. “It’s about political neutrality.”
How do faith and pluralism mix?
Marina Lowe, the policy director of one of Utah’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organizations, Equality Utah, slammed Lee’s proposal as “unAmerican” and “anti-conservative,” arguing that it violates the First Amendment by telling private businesses what speech they can use.
From her point of view, Pride Month and the rainbow flag shouldn’t be considered political in the first place; they represent “a celebration of love, community, getting to be oneself authentically,” Lowe said.
What the so-called “vibe shift” really shows, whether it be in statements from public officials or support from corporations, is how intense polarization, which stirs outrage across the political spectrum, has chilled free expression, Lowe said.
“That is sort of the world that we’re living in right now, that it’s impossible to take positions on things without that being weaponized against one side or the other,” Lowe said.
“We do need to get to a better place of healthy pluralism, where we all can coexist and work together, despite the fact that we have differences and differences of opinions about topics.”
On Friday, standing in front of the City and County Building, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall launched Pride Month by raising a Progress Pride Flag imprinted with the city’s logo.
A month earlier, the altered version of Salt Lake City’s flag was officially adopted in a successful move to skirt the Legislature’s new law prohibiting local governments from flying most flags.
In her speech, Mendenhall said the “new Sego Belonging Flag” celebrates “the diversity of the LGBTQ community” and “does not exclude others.”
However, several conservative constituents took to social media to express anger that the city would continue to promote a message that many Utahns feel conflicts with their deeply held beliefs about family, identity and sexuality.
One Utah leader, who understands both sides of the Pride Month debate, said there is a way for all Utahns, regardless of whether “Pride” encourages or offends them, to be intentional about reaching out to others.
The Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen is a gay pastor based in Ogden who directs a group called Parity, an international nonprofit that works to heal “LGBT and faith divides,” and who played a significant role in shaping Utah’s 2015 “Utah Compromise,” that balanced LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections with religious freedom rights.
More recently, her organization completed a pilot program with students and faculty from Brigham Young University called “Faith, Hope, and Love” that aims to help religious individuals “stand strong in their faith and convictions while maintaining a posture of compassion and grace in relationship with LGBT individuals.”
“Often someone knows a person who is LGBT, either at their workplace or in their family or their neighborhood, it’s a wonderful time to say, ‘Thinking of you and your family,’” the Rev. Edmonds-Allen said. “It doesn’t need to mention Pride or LGBT, but just being friendly to someone.”
In her experience, Utah has been “a shining light” in demonstrating what the Rev. Edmonds-Allen calls “covenantal pluralism,” the idea that people of faith can hold firm to their religious beliefs while still being able to interact with someone who believes differently.
Far from being a softening of one’s beliefs, the Rev. Edmonds-Allen views this intentional cultivation of pluralism as “a fundamental principle of Christianity.”
It is also one of the core “responsibilities of citizenship,” according to BYU’s Paul Edwards.
As the excesses of DEI have elicited an equally “dogmatic” response in the opposite direction, Edwards believes it is more important than ever for Americans “to try to understand our fellow citizens.”
“There’s just too many sharp elbows out there right now and hurtful words,” Edwards said. “We all love this great state and this great country, and let’s find ways to honor that and not be seeking for ways to be offended by a word or a flag.”