It’s June, the month of graduations, weddings, and oh yes, “gay pride.” President Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president officially to recognize June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month — after all, it seems the man never met a sexual activity he didn’t approve of.

After a restoration of sanity under George W. Bush, Barack Obama took gay pride to the next level, lauding LGBT proclivities as central to America’s story, upending the moral code of the U.S. military by demanding a red carpet for LBGT enlistees, and working to make sure Stonewall National Monument in New York become the first national park dedicated to LBGT history.

Although Donald Trump has not issued an LBGT Pride Month proclamation, that doesn’t mean Pride festivals have ceased. Washington, DC, will see rainbows galore this weekend at the “Equality March” to fight the “persecution and discrimination of LGBTQ+ individuals.” It remains unclear how having a national monument named for your cause amounts to “persecution.”

Indeed, given the preferences and privileges now awarded to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, transitioning (etc.) individuals — and seriously, most of us have to buck up and take if someone disagrees with us; disagree with someone toting a sexual-identity label and you could end up financially ruined by a court — one can only wonder who really gains from these displays of sexual license.

As American Media Institute Fellow Bruce Majors writes, “So much of the ‘gay agenda’ has been achieved — with gay marriage legal and gays serving in the military … that the gay political class and its lucrative fundraising engine has little reason to exist anymore. For the past year, they could function as a component of Hillary’s presidential campaign. But for the long haul, they needed to find a new cause around which they could legislate, litigate, and above all, raise funds. For now, transsexuals are the answer.”

Yet, as Majors points out, lumping gays and lesbians (who may prefer single-sex showers) with transgender individuals (who could theoretically rob the gay and lesbian ranks if, say, athletic girls are pressured to “transition” to males rather than become lesbians) makes about as much sense as lumping blacks, Hispanics and Asians into a single “interest group” because they’re all “people of color.” Not that a monolithic “black” identity is better, but we digress…

Why, then, are gay pride events still abounding — and what are they still fighting for? Well, Majors believes “gay pride” has simply become the front for progressive groups needing an issue — any issue — around which to wield power and pad their coffers. Indeed, he notes, “[The gay Millennium March in 2000] became the target of an FBI probe after $750,000 collected in fees from participants disappeared. On occasion, a journalist covering events for the gay press will note how often gay and AIDS events and organizations end up in the red, or how often staffers are tried for embezzlement. So one must wonder about ‘above board’ members of the gay political class as well: are they in it for the money.”

Another possible reason gay pride marches continue to abound is the LGBT community doesn’t simply want equal rights. They demand preferential treatment and public validation of their lifestyles. Equality isn’t the goal; it never was. Today, they’ve anointed transgender individuals as their next unprotected class. Tomorrow, what, pedophiles?

Perhaps there’s truth to the claim that LBGT individuals are victims, but the aggressor isn’t societal prejudice. It’s a powerful lobby exploiting people with gender disorientation pathology for political gain.