Several longtime sponsors of the annual San Francisco Pride parade have pulled their funding, a move executive director Suzanne Ford called "very abnormal."
"I just interpreted that companies are making decisions that at this time, it's not good to be sponsoring Pride," Ford told SFGATE. "I think, in this political environment, that they thought that was a risky decision. But that's just me reading the tea leaves. I think for a long-term sponsor not to sponsor us, they are responding to what we are."
The sponsors included Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Diageo, and La Crema. The organization will have to scramble to make up the $300,000 shortfall.
The report comes after San Francisco Pride announced it was ending its longtime partnership with Meta after the company terminated its DEI programs.
"Right now, you see a lot of negative attention on the LGBTQ community, and maybe people are making this decision from a marketing point of view. I think that is a very short-term view, and I think it's dangerous for companies to take that view," Ford said.