SF drag star Peaches Christ is calling out Google for appearing to kowtow to conservatives and tone down their presence at an employee Pride event this year and pretend that the employees had gone rogue.
It’s an echo of what happened last month with the L.A. Dodgers, who disinvited and then re-invited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to their Pride Night game after some right-wing backlash that bled into local fan backlash. Apparently, while the Google employee event went on as planned, Google essentially divorced themselves from it as a company due to some protest by two employees who claimed it promoted “anti-Christian themes.”
USA Today reports on Ms. Christ and her displeasure with Google, who hired her to host a similar event last year at Beaux in the Castro. And CNBC is on the story too, reporting that Google actually removed the event from an internal employee events page. Apparently the employees at the event even apologized for all that had gone down.
As Peaches tells the Chronicle, “Last year, the same event that I hosted at Beaux was a [Google] sanctioned event. For the Google employees, especially the ones that were there last night, you could see how disappointed and embarrassed they were."
The company put out a statement, unattributed to any spokesperson, saying, “We’ve long been very proud to celebrate and support the LGBTQ+ community. Our Pride celebrations have regularly featured drag artists for many years, including several this year.”
The problem, likely, was the fact that Peaches Christ has “Christ” in her name — a satiric nod to the savior, and her drag has never been about religion — and these Christians have no idea who she is or what she’s about.
The company, in its statement, glossed over the fact that it had sanctioned and hosted the same employee event last year for Pride, and claimed that this time it was somehow unsanctioned.
“This particular event was booked by and shared within one team without going through our standard events process,” the statement said. “While the event organizers shifted the official team event onsite, the performance went on at the planned venue — and it was open to the public, so employees could still attend.”
Peaches didn’t mince words in her comments from the stage at the event, which were widely shared via video. “This thing that happened with Google, unfortunately today for this event, is actually indicative of a huge groundswell of hatred across the country using drag queens and trans people as scapegoats,” Peaches said. “All it is is hatred.”
And she added, ““We as queer people don’t feel like there was any real allyship [here]. You’re Google. What you decide matters."
The controversy is sure to draw more criticism about the increasing "pinkwashing" and corporatization of things like the SF Pride Parade — where multiple companies, including Google, regularly provide sponsorship dollars and send their employees to participate in company t-shirts.
Giving in to a couple employees who don't know Peaches Christ from Judas Priest, and letting your own queer employees down, kind of proves you're no ally.
Top photo: Magnus Hastings
