Booz Allen Hamilton, the mammoth Beltway federal contractor, has long been a supporter of LGBTQ+ causes. “For two decades and counting, we’ve dedicated ourselves to the advancement of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, queer, and questioning employees,” a page on the firm’s site declared in 2024. So when Washington first won the right to host one of the world’s biggest gay festivals, it was only natural that Booz Allen signed on to underwrite the event known as WorldPride 2025.

But that was before the election. This week, with WorldPride projected to draw three million visitors in just a few months, Booz Allen abruptly withdrew as a sponsor — apparently worried that merely supporting a global gay festival would put it on the wrong side of its dominant customer: President Donald Trump’s federal government.

“They have a lot of federal contracts,” said Ryan Bos, the organizer of WorldPride, who explained that Booz Allen had indicated that sponsoring WorldPride could put it out of compliance with Trump’s executive order forbidding diversity, equity and inclusion rules in federal contracting. “They made the decision that to protect their business, they did not want to risk the backlash.”