Retailers embrace the LGBTQ rainbow

New York

Major retailers have diversified their inventory for Pride month, selling apparel and other goods that celebrate LGBTQ culture to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

In New York City, Macy's flagship store is adorned with rainbow-colored Pride tribute windows, set in the same space as its famous Christmas displays. Times Square's digital billboards are splashed with pitches for Pride-linked clothing and cosmetics sold at Sephora, CoverGirl and Levi's stores nearby.

But this year, the truly game-changing Pride sales scene is not in cutting-edge New York.

In 25 years working for organizations devoted to LGBTQ causes, "this is absolutely the first year that I have noticed the retail celebration of Pride moving from larger coastal cities to smaller towns and cities," said Stephen Macias, the Los Angeles-based head of the Diversity & Inclusion department at the MWWPR global publicity firm.

He was taken aback by what he saw visiting his childhood hometown, Fresno, Calif., in an agricultural part of the state politically distant from liberal Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"When I went home to Fresno, where I was bullied at the mall as an effeminate kid, I was looking at so many stores with rainbow flags, Pride displays and same-sex families set up in the windows," Macias said. "I was shocked that in Middle America, we were being celebrated."

In Oklahoma City, the locally owned Red Coyote Running and Fitness displayed shoes with rainbow Pride flags planted in them. On Saturday, it sponsored an inaugural "Love Run" race, complete with rainbow medals.

It took decades, but American businesses in recent years have introduced more LGBTQ-themed items, no longer considering them anathema to mass marketing. The LGBTQ presence in retail has never been as...