Fighting for LGBTQ equality: The substance beneath Dr. Bronner’s foam

Thom Senzee, author of this article, is a West Coast-based freelance journalist, and a regular contributor to San Diego LGBT Weekly.

David Bronner has been quoted in Mother Jones and Bloomberg that in his case, CEO stands for “cosmic engagement officer,” rather than chief executive officer, the nomenclature of most corporate corner-officeholders.

“I got a promotion,” Bronner told San Diego LGBT Weekly during an interview at his firm’s headquarters in Vista about 28 miles north of downtown San Diego. As Winston Churchill once described an entirely different subject, David Bronner is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Dr. Bronner’s is known to most American consumers for its ethos-emblazoned product labels and “pure Castile soaps.” But the company has other reasons for notoriety in the LGBTQ community – especially in its hometown region of San Diego.

San Diego families and individuals, LGBT, queer and straight alike, who regularly attend the city’s annual LGBT Pride Parade are as likely to associate Dr. Bronner’s with its no-holds-barred, party-like-it’s-1999 “Foam Experience” award-winning parade float as they are to think of shampoo or soap when they see the Dr. Bronner’s name.

Accompanied by Dr. Bronner’s own siren-blaring, vintage fire engine, the double-decker, plexiglass float traces a path of hoots and hollers through the parade route up University Avenue like a stadium wave as it passes spectators each year.

Ariel Vegosen, a professional gender inclusivity trainer who identifies as genderqueer and is founder of Dr. Bronner’s partner organization, Gender Illumination, says their (one of Vegosen’s preferred pronouns) organization’s leading benefactors – you guessed it, Dr. Bronner’s – made an indelible mark at the San Diego LGBT Pride Parade.

“You see Dr. Bronner’s in the Pride Parade,” Vegosen who flew in from San Francisco to join David Bronner for his interview with LGBT Weekly. “They’re not just in the parade because it’s a beautiful thing; they’re there because it’s a protest and a march.”

According to Vegosen, Dr. Bronner’s support for the LGBTQ community and the company’s visibility at Pride events reflects a commitment to justice that’s crucial if our rights are to endure the current political threats emanating from the nation’s capital and elsewhere.

“Even though we’ve come so far and we have a lot of rights and Pride parades kind of feel like a celebration – and it is a celebration – we’re still rooted in the fact that this is still about justice and rights,” they said. “That’s why Dr. Bronner’s and Gender Illumination are in the Pride Parade and in the movement.”

Dr. Bronner’s was founded in 1948 in Escondido. But the Bronner family has been making and selling soap in Germany since the mid-19th century. Emanuel Bronner, David’s grandfather, escaped the fate of his parents, who died in Nazi concentration camps, by emigrating to the United States before World War II.

He also escaped an asylum in Chicago where he suffered abuse. Dr. Bronner made it to Los Angeles and preached his humanist “All-One” philosophy in Pershing Square. He used his inherited skill as a soap maker to lure in listeners by handing out free bottles. But when he realized people were coming for the soap and not staying for his talks, Dr. Bronner decided he’d reach a wider audience by printing his message on the soap bottles.

Dr. Bronner’s operation grew and eventually landed in San Diego County. By 1998, after two elder Bronners’ deaths, a self-described metaphysical experience led David Bronner to reverse his decision not to take up the family trade. Having completed his education at Harvard School of Business, he returned from Amsterdam and assumed the helm of what was then a still substantial, however considerably smaller company.

Coming to terms with queerness

“The queerness goes all the way to the top,” David Bronner told LGBT Weekly, making a bit of news by nominally outing himself as an erstwhile member of the LGBTQ community, as long as that means residing somewhere along a Kinsey scale of potential queerness.

Having grown his family’s company during the past decade from just under a $10 million enterprise to one with about $100 million in sales now, employing about a 64 percent minority workforce who enjoy salaries that are no less than one-fifth his own, Bronner says a significant percentage of his employees are members of the LGBTQ community.

“It’s hard to say exactly, but I’m sure at least 10 percent.”

Yet the Bronner name is not entirely unblemished when it comes to how people of minority sexual orientations and gender identities or expressions are perceived.

“Unfortunately Dr. Bronner wasn’t too great on LBGTQ equality back in the day,” David Bronner lamented. “He didn’t go out of his way to hate, but there’s a letter he sent way back when that was brought to our attention 15 years ago, making some ridiculous and insensitive remarks.”

That’s a hard thing to reconcile, given the fact that Emanuel Bronner, who died in 1997 at age 89, might otherwise be a candidate for sainthood in the minds of most human rights advocates, as well as most pacifists, environmentalists, progressives, futurists, humanists, small-u universalists (and probably large-U ones too) – not to mention many conservationists and possibly even some libertarians.

“I like to think he was the kind of person who would have evolved as many have, and open his heart to all our beautiful LBGTQ brothers and sisters and everyone in between on the rainbow spectrum,” the late chemist and soap maker’s grandson, said.

“Homophobia was and is a disease that infects many otherwise wonderful people, and given Dr. Bronner’s ‘All-One’ vision, I think having a straight talk about it with him would have gotten him on the right, loving side of the situation.”

Regardless, Bronner continues, his family, a team of nearly 200 Dr. Bronner’s employees and “…the incredible progressive engine he bequeathed to us to advance LBGTQ equality in all ways…” is part of his grandfather’s legacy.

“One of my favorite aphorisms from Dr. Bronner is appropriate in this case: ‘So, when your fellow man you measure, take him at his best: with that lever, lift him higher, overlook the rest! For we’re All-One or None!”

The list of LGBTQ organizations, campaigns and events Dr. Bronner’s financially supports is almost too long to list in one article. In California alone, a partial list includes SheFest, Pride Run 5k, San Diego LGBT Pride, numerous community events and nonprofit fundraisers held at Urban Mo’s, Gender Illumination, Tantrums and Tiaras and LGBTs In The News with Thom Senzee. Full disclosure: The latter entity is a live-discussion panel series moderated by this reporter.

“Dr. Bronner’s has been a wonderful supporter of San Diego Pride and SheFest in the past,” said Sarafina Scapicchio, director of development at San Diego LGBT Pride. “This year we were thrilled when they elevated their support of our local LGBTQ women’s community to become our presenting sponsor of SheFest 2017. It’s great to see a family-owned business that is so invested in being both environmentally conscious, and socially aware.”

David Bronner’s casual persona and penchant for celebratory surroundings belies a drive to change the world. That’s what makes him a Bronner in the mold of his late grandfather. We can’t know yet what if any moral blind spots Bronner the younger’s ethos may conceal. The ethics of human rights, human relations and environmental stewardship never stop evolving.

But keeping in mind that the Bronner family includes victims of the Holocaust, it’s noteworthy that Dr. Nasser Abufarha, head of a fair-trade, sustainable olive oil farming consortium in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territory, wrote in the 2017 edition of Dr. Bronner’s 2017 “All-One” annual report:

Though Dr. Bronner’s sources our olive oil for their organic fair trade soaps, they also helped to nurture one of our most precious food sources, and save one of the longest-giving regenerative ecosystems and farming traditions in the world. And together we gave the world a window through which to see Palestinians as custodians of these sustainable farming traditions…

Bucking intuitions about historical adversaries, the other two featured writers at the front of the company’s annual report, this year titled, “Why We Make Soap,” were Dr. Bronner’s operation in Germany and its distributor in Israel.

Back in San Diego, Lukas Volk, marketing and events director at Mo’s Universe (parent company of some of the most successful eateries and bars in and around Hillcrest), whose purview includes fielding a stream of requests for sponsorships and support for local LGBTQ events and nonprofit groups that sometimes seems endless, says Dr. Bronner’s help in meeting those requests is invaluable.

“Dr. Bronner’s has been a tremendous supporter of the LGBTQ community for many years,” Volk told LGBT Weekly. “We couldn’t think of a better company to partner with.”

A member of our photography team asked to use the restroom as we wrapped up the exterior shoot. That’s when I noticed something that I was surprised neither Bronner, nor even Ariel Vegosen had bothered to bring up during the interview.

Way back in a far corner of the factory floor, where the fire engine is kept, there’s a restroom displaying a shiny, blue-and-white, ultra-modern, gender-inclusive restroom sign. I point out to the CEO that there are state legislatures and governors who have dedicated untold hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds to fight tooth and nail against just such little pieces of plastic on his company’s restroom doors.

That’s when David Bronner flashed a casual half-grin and reminded this reporter that in addition to being a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, he’s also kind of just a regular Southern California kid.

“Oh yeah, dude,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”

Be sure to visit LGBTweekly.com for additional photos and interview quotes from our photoshoot at Dr. Bronner’s campus in Vista.