Gay Pride is in trouble - this time next year, we'll be hosting Europride, a kind of European Olympics of gayness, without any actual sport. Judging by the pretty poor Athens turnout last year, Europride is actually a lot better at bringing in tourists than the Olympics, and that's before you even consider the fact that we're not going to win the bid anyway, however many brightly coloured banners entreat us to back it. The problem is sponsorship; two agencies hired to drum up blue-chip support resigned within a month of one another, saying there wasn't enough interest. A number of high-profile sponsors of previous gay events - Interflora, Virgin Atlantic, BT - have refused to be involved in this year's Pride. That leaves the organisers with Ford, Virgin Mobile and the office of the Mayor of London, which is some come-down from the days when companies were clamouring to get their logos on to street parties like this.  Practically speaking, I don't think this is the end of the world - the elements of carnival that require sponsorship are things like sound systems, barriers, streamers along the lines of a church hall party for disadvantaged children, and clearing them all up afterwards. If you couldn't afford the temporary street furniture, you wouldn't need to clean it up. Just because Virgin Atlantic didn't "see anything that they thought would be a good fit for their brand", there wouldn't be any shortage of carousers wearing flashing devil horns and chancers selling Red Stripe at hilarious prices. I don't hold with it as an adage for the rest of the year, but definitely at festival time the best things in life are free. Still, it's an interesting development in the world of corporate branding. Why were they so keen to sponsor this event in the first place? And what's changed, in the "fit" between an airline and a carnival of broad-mindedness?  I don't think this sponsorship was ever an attempt to woo the pink pound specifically - that might have been a side issue, but the association had broader aims than that. Signing up as an active supporter of a gay event sends out a variety of messages. It allies your company to youth and modernity; it presents a friendly face, a "we're just like you - we like fun, too!" which has become especially important as radical politics in the last decade has swerved away from governments as foes, and towards corporations. Furthermore, this is the safest and least contentious of celebrations - it has a political foundation, which lends it a certain good-natured gravity and validates the hedonism with feelgood principles. And it is unarguable - there simply aren't many people left who object to homosexuality, or at least who would do so openly, so a sponsor can cash in on all the associations of courage and tolerance that involvement brings without risking very much. So what's changed? An arrangement as mutually beneficial as that should have gone on for years.  The most positive spin possible is that homophobia is such a dead duck, prejudice-wise, such an ancient and laughable concept, that companies just don't get enough bang for their buck when they declare themselves its enemy. If sexual prejudice of this sort is indeed over, then sponsoring a celebration of gay culture is like sponsoring a party to mark the end of slavery - sure, it's a good thing for it to be over, but it's so completely over that to mark its passing feels a bit passe, a bit suspect, even, to be the kind of company that doesn't know how passe it is.  If this is the case, then it's good news for equality generally, but pretty bad news for Gay Pride, since the further down the road of tolerance we travel, the less likely they are ever to get sponsored by anybody. However, it doesn't ring totally true - the evidence doesn't suggest that being gay is losing its taboo on a steady curve. There were more high-profile attacks on gay men last year, for instance, than in the three previous years put together. Legislatively - in terms of gay marriage, adoption - the passage to equality seems to have stalled, rather.  The alternative thesis is that, even if the actual conditions and legal position of homosexuals haven't changed all that much, even if society is shot through with as much prejudice as five or even 10 years ago, the atmosphere has nevertheless changed, to the degree that the crusade just isn't cool any more. It has changed as a result of politicians in general, and the Tory party in particular - during the last election campaign, whenever they said anything at all draconian, or intolerant, or authoritarian, someone would pop up and reassure everyone that, whatever they thought about asylum seekers, gay people were still A-okay.  The issue of homosexuality has been used like a clove of garlic against the vampire of being seen as hardline or fanatical - they didn't quite believe it would work, but it was always worth a try. The upshot is that corporations no longer want to get financially involved with gay rights but the statutory landscape hasn't changed much, either. Nice. Just as Michael Howard skulks off the stage, there's still one more thing to blame him for ...