DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Retail giant Target is promoting its "Take Pride" hashtag, promoting the LGBT agenda for the second year in a row. The hashtag also promotes a line of rainbow-colored merchandise, including shirts, pants, shorts and the like. This comes ahead of June, known as "Pride Month."
Photos of store displays featuring an array of rainbow-colored merchandise were sent out via Twitter accounts located in Elmhurt, NY, Jericho, New York and Washington, D.C. Church Militant contacted several local Target stores in Detroit as well as Target corporate headquarters, which was unable to comment on how many locations were participating in the campaign or if store participation was determined on a store-by-store basis or on corporate assignment.
The "Take Pride" campaign is a follow-up on the chain's so-called transgender bathroom policy, implemented last year, which allows men to use women's restrooms and vice versa. The policy was announced on the Target website, featuring its signature bullseye logo with half of the symbol converted to a rainbow. The policy prompted a boycott by an estimated 1.2 million people. The boycott, organized by the American Family Association, has caused an ongoing plummet in Target's stock, which fell 13 percent in February alone, resulting in $15 billion worth of loss in stock value.
The losses prompted the chain to suddenly call off expansion projects, which were intended to keep Target on the cutting edge of retail, one of which involved small storefronts connected to large warehouses with robots picking products for customers, not dissimilar to what happens at an Amazon fulfillment facility. Target continues to grasp for alternative explanations for its loss of business, however, citing slumping electronics sales and decreases in visits to their in-store pharmacies.
Target CEO Brian Cornell in an interview on CNBC's program Squawk Box compared the store's transgender bathroom policy to African American civil rights breakthroughs in the 1960s, saying, "A couple of weeks ago, I had one of our team members send me a note, reminding me that if we went back to the mid-sixties, our company was one of the very first to use African American models in their advertising. And back then it wasn't well received; we had a lot of tough feedback."
Target's doubling down on its vocal support of the homosexual and transgender agenda in the face of devastating business losses stands in stark contrast to the inverse course of events of pro-marriage Chick-fil-A, which, as Church Militant has recently reported, has only seen growth in spite of attempted boycotts by gay activists.
The implementation of Target's transgender bathroom policy in 2016 ushered in an onslaught of sex offender incidents in Target store bathrooms in Dallas, Idaho, Toronto, California, Seattle and Oregon, involving men accessing women's restrooms and changing rooms. Target's policy came after a bathroom law passed in North Carolina, HB2, mandated that people use the restroom corresponding to their biological sex. The bill was repealed in March.
Since then, 16 states have introduced similar bathroom bills, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In contrast, 19 states, as well as the District of Columbia, have passed "anti-discrimination" laws allowing transgenders to use bathrooms that correspond to their "gender identity."
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