The 2025 Nashville Pride Festival and Parade confirmed several of its “longtime supporters” have opted out of sponsoring the event this year amid widespread rollbacks of DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies at American companies across the nation.
In a letter to its supporters, the Nashville Pride Board of Directors laid out the financial challenges this year’s festival and parade faces due to the loss of multiple sponsors that supported the events in past years.
“2025 has brought its challenges. Like many organizations, we are facing financial setbacks this year due to the loss of several longtime supporters. These step-backs have left us with a significant budget gap to fill–at a time when our visibility, safety, and celebration matter more than ever,” the letter to supporters said.
The letter continued, calling on its supporters to “show up” in order to fill the void of the loss of sponsors this year.
“If you’ve ever felt the magic of Pride…Buy a ticket. Make a donation. Become a sponsor. Show up where others have stepped back. In a year marked by retreat, your support isn’t just meaningful–it’s vital,” the letter said.
Nashville Pride’s list of sponsors for this year’s events notably exclude Nissan, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Jack Daniel’s, and Dollar General – all of which sponsored 2024 Nashville Pride events.
Nissan and Jack Daniel’s were among the many companies that dropped their controversial DEI policies within the past year as a result of investigative work by Tennessee political commentator and filmmaker Robby Starbuck, who seeks to expose large American companies that push DEI initiatives in the workplace.
Jack Daniel’s specifically said it would end its participation in an “Equality Index social credit system”; making bonuses/goals for employees solely based on business performance; ending “quantitative workforce and supplier diversity ambitions”; and cutting woke trainings for its employees.
Nissan committed to no longer participating in the HRC’s woke Corporate Equality Index or in any third party survey that has a political activism angle, reviewing its sponsorship of events, requiring training related to the “core business,” and changing its supplier diversity and hiring practices to ensure there are no quotas for hiring, promotions, or diverse suppliers.
This year, Nashville Pride’s most notable sponsors include AllianceBernstein, Bridgestone, Amazon, Cummins, the Nashville Predators, Journeys, the Tennessee Titans, Planned Parenthood, Verizon, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville College of Social Work, and the Nashville Soccer Club.
Local media outlets WSMV and Nashville Scene are also sponsoring this year’s Nashville Pride events.
The Nashville Pride Fest will take place next weekend, beginning Friday, June 27, with a concert at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. On Saturday, the parade will step off at Broadway and 8th Ave at 10:00 a.m.
The festival will continue at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park through Sunday, June 29.
As in prior years of Nashville Pride, this year’s festival will host “Kids and Family” events, including two scheduled “Drag Story Time” events with drag queen Veronika Electronika – a biological male who was born Steven Raimo.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Drag queen story hour…..make it go away. So very disgusted with Nashville leadership. Council members form a black caucus, I hope this division will be ended soon.
Thank you Robby Starbuck for fighting back. Especially pushing Jack Daniels and Tractor Supply. Two Tennessee companies that should have known their sponsorships were completely opposite the opinions of their customers.
Good. More sponsors need to go
These folks cannot make a buck off of “pride” so they pull out. They should have never supported this stuff in the first place.
” . . . this year’s festival will host “Kids and Family” events, including two scheduled “Drag Story Time” events with drag queen Veronika Electronika – a biological male who was born Steven Raimo.”
Nashville political and business leaders should be ashamed for including this perverted event for our precious children. But they think they are being cool and hip and inclusive and open-minded.
In truth, they have no compassion for our children (much less any wisdom about their innocence) and have lost their moral compass. They pander to a loud, vocal minority who are lost in the wilderness of a soul denying ideology of social research and critical theory from the Marxist Frankfort School that has been fed to them in our pubic schools and colleges. This is a journey into darkness, sad to see and will not end well.
Corporations need to stop supporting and funding mentall illness, or their sharholders (where applicable) need to start suing them.