Bud Light hired transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesperson and lost its first place among best-selling beer brands to Modelo Especial. Target chose to withdraw “gay” sales items rather than defy critics. But that does not mean businesses are surrendering to antiLGBTQIA+ activists.

Bud Light’s parent company AnheuserBusch and Target remain supporters, along with several other companies, The Associated Press reported. Target is a platinum sponsor of New York City’s Pride celebration – organized by LGBTQIA+ prganizations — donating $175,000. Anheuser-Busch sponsors events in cities such as Chicago, Charlotte and San Francisco. Disney has sued Florida to defend its right to criticize the state’s “gay” policies.

Businesses such as PepsiCo, Starbucks, General Motors and Jeep parent Stellantis have supported Pride events for decades. InterPride, umbrella for 375 Pride groups globally, reported that 40 percent of companies have said they will increase their sponsorship dollars for Pride events by 20 percent this year. Altruism probably has nothing to do with it. They have more than $1 trillion spending power, LGBT Capital, a United Kingdom-based investment company, reported.

“For every one customer knocking the [Target] display over, there are 10 who love it and they are going to vote with their feet,” Allen Adamson, co-founder and managing partner of marketing firm Metaforce told the AP.

The LGBTQIA+ community, usually lumped together as “gays,” comprise more than lesbian women and gay men. They also include bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual Americans. They express themselves through the Pride movement, including Pride Month in June and Pride Day. Though not numerically strong, the community has considerable buying power.

And they doubled in number over the past 10 years to 21 million or 7.1 percent of the population, Gallup reported. They total 886,000 or 4.6 percent of Floridians, the Movement Advancement Project said. Gallup reported that Gen Z Americans who consider themselves lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender have increased at a faster pace over the past year than in prior years. Now, while one in 10 millennials identify as LGBTQIA+, one in five of the Gen Z generation do so and LGBTQIA+ Americans are predicted exceed 10 percent of the nation “in the near future.”

Seventy-two percent of Americans overall do not seem have a problem with that, Pew Research Center reported, up from 49 percent 15 years ago. But that has not deterred around 20 mostly Southern states from filing almost 200 bills last year “that seek to erode protections for transgender and gay youth or restrict discussion of LGBTQ topics in public schools,” The Washington Post reported.

At least 166 bills restricting LGBTQIA+ rights were pending in state legislatures — four times the number introduced three years earlier, The Post said, citing data from the LGBTQIA+ advocacy group Freedom for All Americans. Seventy-five bills would bar or severely restrict classroom discussions, curriculum and library books that mention LGBTQIA+ issues, mostly, but not exclusively, in primary grades. Fifty others would “ban transgender youth from playing competitive school sports on teams that don’t align with the gender they were assigned at birth,” in the words of The Post.

At least 29 would outlaw gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, “which primarily involves hormone therapy to delay the onset of puberty or to begin the process of transitioning.” Some measures would criminalize “providing such care to children and young teens, or to make it a crime for parents to sign off on such care.” Such laws, The Post noted, contradict the position of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups which endorse such treatments as saving lives.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, signed four bills on May 17 which, Insider reported, “will deeply disrupt the lives of transgender people in the state, whether it be over access to healthcare, bathroom use, lessons about LGBTQ+ topics or pronouns in schools. “ One law makes it a crime for Floridians to use bathrooms that do not match the gender they were assigned at birth, including at public schools, universities, parks, prisons and other government buildings. Another makes it an offense for doctors to offer treatments such as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgery — such as breast removal — to transgender minors, even when parents give their consent. The courts are empowered to intervene when minors seek such treatments out of state.

Also, healthcare providers and health insurance companies can refuse care on "religious, moral or ethical" grounds, which is expected to “disproportionately affect transgender people seeking care,” Insider reported.

Another law makes it an offense for “adult live performances” – drag shows — to be staged where minors could be present, even with their parents. In March, the state began the process of revoking the Hyatt Regency Miami hotel’s alcohol license after one of its facilities hosted "A Drag Queen Christmas" with minors in the audience.

“The explosion of legislation is in part the culmination of efforts by a trio of conservative organizations which are helping state legislators write and promote the bills,” The Post said. One of the most active, the Alliance Defending Freedom, “has a decades-long history of fighting LGBTQ rights, including in battles to preserve state laws criminalizing consensual sex between gay adults, court records show.”

The LGBTQIA+ community and allies such as the ACLU have been fighting back with a series of lawsuits, with some success. U.S. District Judge David Nuffer ordered the Utah city St. George to allow an all-ages drag show to take place, The AP reported. “The First Amendment of the United States Constitution ensures that all citizens, popular or not, majority or minority, conventional or unconventional, have access to public spaces for public expression,” Nuffer wrote in a ruling on Friday as he dubbed the enabling ordinance a pretext for discrimination.

In Indiana, U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon issued a temporary injunction blocking the state’s ban on gender-affirming care which was due to come into force July 1, Axios reported. Other courts have also blocked similar laws in states such as Florida, Alabama, Arkansas and Missouri.

The College Board, fresh from a confrontation with the Ron DeSantis administration over AP African history, has rejected a request from Florida to alter its curriculum to meet the state’s new education requirements, including sections dealing with sex and gender in its Advanced Placement Psychology course and exam, Fox 35 Orlando reported.“ The learning objective within AP Psychology that covers gender and sexual orientation has specifically been raised by some Florida districts relative to these recent regulations," the College Board said in a statement. "That learning objective must remain a required topic, just as it has been in Florida for many years."

Meanwhile, the LGBTQIA+ community continue to celebrate the annual Pride Month to emphasis their choice for the “pursuit of happiness” as set out in the Declaration of Independence. These include, this year, a June 11 celebration in Key West when a 1.25-mile Pride flag was carried from the Gulf of Mexico to Duval Street for the first time in 20 years, WFLA reported.

New York City chose “Strength in Solidarity” as the theme for its Pride celebration this Sunday. A float carrying transgender “people of color” is planned and representatives of the transgender community will be among the grand marshals.

“Whether it’s transgender grand marshals at the massive New York City Pride parade or a photo display of transgender victims of violence at the much smaller festival in Hastings, Nebraska, many celebrations this June are taking a public stand against state legislation targeting transgender people,” the AP said. “Some Prides are putting transgender people front and center at events where they’ve often been sidelined because of a historical emphasis on gay and lesbian rights, along with the same sorts of prejudice and misinformation held by many straight, cisgender, people about trans lives.”