I wonder why
Category: Violence
LGBTQIA+ UNDER ATTACK at Target (and Matt Walsh’s INSANELY CREEPY and HYPOCRITICAL Baby Plush)
Target pulls some LGBTQ+ Pride products from shelves due to violent threats towards staff
This is terrorism, causing fear and harm for a political gain. This is 1930s German brownshirts attacking Jewish people and establishments along with anyone who did not support Hitlers goals / bigotry. These people attacking trans people / drag queens and business supporters of the LGBTQ+ are the US fundamentalist Christian maga conservative Nazi gang thugs Taliban pushing their bigotry on to the entire public that doesn’t agree with them. I keep asking who will be targeted next? The Texas Chaplin bill that pushes unqualified religious leaders in public school as councilors to the children specifies Christian leaders, and they wouldn’t allow amendments to let other religions be included. So tell me who the group to be targeted when they force3 the LGBTQ+ into hiding and out of public view? Hugs
To mark Pride Month 2023, Target teamed up with LGBTQ+ artists to create capsule collections.(Target/PinkNews)
US retailer Target has pulled some of its LGBTQ+ Pride collection and displays from stores across the country after members of staff faced threats of violence.
The company confirmed on Tuesday (22 May) that it will be making changes to its LGBTQ+ merchandise ahead of Pride month, which starts next week.
One of the changes includes moving the Pride collection to the back of some of its shops in southern states, following a backlash from shoppers.
The New York Post quoted a Target source as saying there were “emergency” meetings on Friday (19 May) to address right-wing customers’ outrage over the collections.
The 15-minute meeting included advice about keeping sales staff safe and what Pride-related items and signage to remove.
“We call our customers ‘guests,’ there is outrage on their part. This year it is just exponentially more than any other year,” the source said.
The company is “terrified of a Bud Light situation”, the insider added.
“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement.
“Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the centre of the most significant confrontational behaviour.”
Daily Beast journalist Matt Young shared an extract of the Target statement on Twitter.
Target has not yet confirmed which specific items or brands will be removed, but it is thought that its “tuck-friendly” swimsuits will no longer be on display.
The swimsuit prompted right-wing Americans to call for a boycott of the store, which sells thousands of products for heterosexual, cisgender people. Republican lawmaker Lauren Boebert was among those fuelling the outrage on social media.
Target chief executive Brian Cornell recently defended the retailer’s commitment to inclusion and LGBTQ+ representation while speaking to Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast.
“It’s helping us drive sales, it’s building greater engagement with both our teams and our guests, and those are just the right things for our business today,” he said.
He told the Associated Press that the swimsuits, which provide wearers with extra crotch coverage, are only available in adult sizes.
Despite Target’s insistence that its change in policy is to protect staff, it has faced criticism online, with people accusing the retailer of “caving in” to right-wing threats.
Some have said that its stance puts LGBTQ+ people in more danger.
One person tweeted: “These people were making death and bomb threats against children’s hospitals, schools and LGBTQ venues.
“Every single time, it got the results they wanted. Why would they stop with Target? Anti-LGBTQ terrorism is continuing to work as intended.”
Bud Light faced a customer boycott over its collaboration with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney last month.
In a bid to regain its formerly loyal customer base, its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, is now said to said to be temporarily redesigning some of its packaging in camouflage print.
PinkNews has contacted Target for comment.
Not your church and some other things I wish to share
These aren’t conservatives – they’re theocratic fascist arsonists trying to burn the country down so they can rebuild it as a white Christian supremacist authoritarian regime.
Posthumously NZArtist2 days ago edited
Yes. He’s saying that straight white men are entitled to one hundred percent of everything.
Who wakes up and decides to call businesses that operate 2000 miles away and threaten them with violence? Well a very devout christian might do something like that. Tim McVeigh was a VERY DEVOUT christian.
Decent, ordinary Americans don’t terrorize retail establishments.
Yves R. Mektin Bruno2 days ago
It’s all part of her master plan to make the Palin family seem functional in comparison. Three-dimensional chess.
Wait for it: soon domestic terrorists and their media apologists will start calling them ‘freedom fighters.’
Mar-A-Lago Staff Moved Docs Ahead Of FBI Arrival
It is also a second charge for obstruction. Then there is the report he was showing the documents to people not authorized to see them. Remember Jack Teixeira, the kid who was arrested a few weeks ago for posting documents online? Unauthorized retention and dissemination of classified material is what Jackie-boy is facing and if these media reports are accurate then Trump is going to be facing them soon as well.
Kirk Calls On Cult To Use “Force” And Destroy Target: “I Want Skull And Bones, Pain, And Bankruptcy” [VIDEO]
GOP wingnut logic in a nutshell: Cancel Culture is only bad when its used against right wing interests.
Uncle Mark’s IML Cosplaying watchthewingnuts2 days ago
liondon#convictedsexoffender2 days ago
April Smith2 days ago edited
You pulling items and moving them to the back into the closet (sorry, store) didn’t placate the haters.
You should have kept things in place up in the front of the store where security could deal with any problems.
Don’t negotiate or cave in to bullies.
“We need to go after Target in a very serious way.”
This from the guy who has complained umpteen million times about how horrible cancel culture is. It turns out, like everything else, that was a lie. He just can’t stand when he (or the white christian nationalists) don’t have power in any aspect of life.
watchthewingnuts crewman2 days ago
It is always, ALWAYS about power. Never about the children, never about god/jeebus/Christianity… it is ALWAYS about more power for them… and no rights for anyone else they deem as “other.” That is the only endgame for these people.
sounds like terrorism to me
billbear1961 licuado de platano2 days ago
Because it IS!
Imagine what the MEDIA would have to say if the LEFT were calling for ANY kind of violence! THIS, because it comes from the RIGHT, gets a PASS from the corporate sellout FRAUDS! (Electoral-Vote recently said Republicans inclined to speak out are afraid to speak out against Trump because they KNOW it will place their LIVES at risk, theirs and their children’s, that THAT is the purpose of the violent rhetoric, the stochastic terrorism, coming from Trump and his followers, to silence any criticism from Republicans who are alarmed by the FASCISM that has taken control of their party! WHERE are the MEDIA, the “Guardians of Democracy,” to call out and DENOUNCE this fascist rhetoric, these fascist tactics which are an ASSAULT on the democracy it is their journalistic DUTY to DEFEND from just such attacks?! They do NOTHING to call it out–they have instead infamously NORMALIZED it, something they NEVER would have done if ANY Democrat had EVER called for his opponents to be “taught a lesson”! Imagine if OBAMA had EVER adopted such an attitude! The media would have exploded in a RAGE and demanded his resignation! But such rhetoric from the right gets a PASS–they are in no way held accountable!)
WHERE is the DOJ? Where is GARLAND, that goddamned WEAKLING? What a pathetic FARCE!
DmR licuado de platano2 days ago
Oh, the thing is, the Wingers have no problem using violence and threats of violence to get their ways. Since they do not have a majority on the social issues, that is one way they know to get what they want.
J.Martindale2 days ago edited
“I will not allow my kid to be corrupted by this trans agenda.” First, the only agenda I know of is that trans people want the right to live as a man or woman depending on their perceived gender identification. That has nothing to do with your children or you. And if you don’t want your children in Target, keep them home. Some people may want the merchandise they are selling, and it is none of your business whether Target sells it or not. You right wingers are just busybodies with too fucking much interest in stuff that is none of your damned business. (He reminds me of Gladys Kravitz.)
Uncle Mark’s IML Cosplaying2 days ago edited
Couldn’t help, but notice that Walmart sells gay pride apparel as well, yet Target becomes the focus of their manufactured ire.
Then again, Target was among the large retailers that encouraged transgender customers to use the bathroom of their choice, several years ago.
Two things…
1/ stochastic terrorism?
2/ if Target had a spine, they should set their lawyers loose to bankrupt him.
Target is already caving. Fascism is winning, folks, I’m sorry to say. And no one is doing a thing to stop it.
As I reported on Monday, the bill is the work of a Texas evangelist who falsely testified to the Texas House that the chaplains will not be “working to convert people to religion.”
In fact, his organization has been open about their desire to proselytize to public school students.
require chaplains to receive consent from the parents of school children
That jumped out at me too. So their long-standing argument that parents should have a voice in their children’s education has been bullshit all along? Got it.
Let’s talk about Texas teachers and me missing something….
LGBTQ Groups To Target: Defend Us, Stand Up To Hate
If stores and other LGBTQ+ allies hide their support the hateful fundamentalist Christian white supremacist maga brownshirt gang thugs win. That encourages them to do more acts of this domestic terrorism. And they are proud of their tactics. And they won’t stop, they can not be appeased. Hugs 
Just in via press release:
Recent pushback against businesses such as Anheuser-Busch and Target, blatantly organized by extremist groups, serves as a wake up call for all businesses that support the LGBTQ+ community.
We’ve seen this extremist playbook of attacks before. Their goal is clear: to prevent LGBTQ+ inclusion and representation, silence our allies and make our community invisible.
These attacks fuel hate against LGBTQ+ people, just as we’ve seen this year with more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that restrict basic freedoms and aim to erase LGBTQ+ people.
Extremist attacks and harassment of businesses for standing in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community and values of diversity, equity and inclusion have challenged Target, and businesses more broadly, to lead – to demonstrate they mean what they say when investing in and standing with LGBTQ+ people, creatives, and organizations.
Businesses must continue to lead and respond with unwavering support for LGBTQ+ employees, shareholders, customers, allies – and the broader community. When values of diversity, equity and inclusion are tested, business must defend them unequivocally.
Doubling down on your values is not only the right thing to do, it’s good for business. Research shows that if a brand publicly supports and demonstrates a commitment to expanding and protecting LGBTQ+ rights, Americans are 2x more likely to buy or use the brand.
Americans ages 18-34 are 5.5x more likely to want to work at a company if it publicly supports and demonstrates a commitment to expanding and protecting LGBTQ+ rights.
It isn’t just LGBTQ+ consumers and communities: 70% of non-LGBTQ+ people believe companies should publicly support and include the LGBTQ+ community through practices like hiring, advertising and sponsorships (Accelerating Acceptance, 2023).
At this moment, it’s critical that Target champions equity and inclusion as it has for over a decade. Target consistently tops the list for brands that show genuine, authentic support of the LGBTQ+ community through outreach and policies.
Target received recognition for outstanding commitment to DEI from the Executive Leadership Council in 2022. It’s time to prove the recognition was earned.
When it comes to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, there is no such thing as neutrality.
We’re calling on Target to release a public statement in the next 24 hours reaffirming their commitment to the LGBTQ+ community, put Pride merchandise back on the sales floor and online in full, ensure safety of team members who are on the front lines.
Target, and all businesses, can leverage the support of LGBTQ+ organizations to navigate this hate, so that together, we can let extremists know unequivocally that, just as with every other failed anti-LGBTQ+ campaign of the past, fear will not win.
The above is cosigned by GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the National Black Justice Coalition, and other groups mentioned below.
The Stomach-Churning Things Nazis Did To Gay Men
And yet history is repeating itself again. The very acceptance of homosexuality and personal sexual freedom experienced by German People was attacked by a movement that wanted to villainize it and made a virtue of not just all things heterosexual but of attacking the homosexuals along with those things that symbolized them or support for them. The things happening in Florida, on the Daily Wire, and in the fundamentalist Republican Party are the same steps taken by Nazi’s in 1930 Germany and in Russia more recently. As yourself, if the Nazi’s stopped with just the homosexuals or trans? Are you comfortable with the direction of the Russian / openly Nazi supporting Republican Party today? Hugs
The conversation had been growing and growing by the week. What started as murmurs of far-right thugs had developed into a fear of a coming political party. Across the bars and meeting places all over the country, the LGBT community of Germany could feel a storm coming. Homosexuality was illegal at the start of 20th century Germany but was counterweighted by a healthy thriving gay culture. Yet what was once angry grandstanding from a fringe socialist worker’s party soon became national policy. In 1933, Adolf Hitler would become Chancellor of Germany and enforced a thoroughly phobic policy agenda by the day. Barely a year later, following a Night of long knives, the Nazi police state made Germany’s homosexual population a primary target. Persecution, arrests, physical abuse, castration, and even the fate of the concentration camps lay ahead. Welcome to History on Fleek, today we examine the unspeakable fates of gay men in Nazi Germany.
Shapiro Host Calls For Making The Pride Flag “Toxic”
This is the goal of the fundamentalist right wing maga Christians racists bigots. It is not about protecting kids. It is about returning to a 1950s social public morality and enforced gender roles. It is about rolling back all social advances gained since the civil rights era. It is entirely about wiping minority rights away and pushing the LGBTQ+ back into the closet while making them afraid to come out openly into society. It is about returning to a time of white straight Christian superiority and automatic assumed authority, with subservient women to do their bidding. So now that this very vocal aggressive arrogant violent minority that feels laws and polite society norms don’t apply to them feels as they have the right to make the entire population follow their religiously driven views from a book written 2,500 years ago. Hugs
“Matt [Walsh] made this point, he articulated it directly, but this has been the point that has been building for months now, which is we need to make that symbol toxic, the pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic.
“We need to have companies think twice about it. Everyone was talking about the Dylan Mulvaney incident as being harmful to the Bud Light brand. That’s true.
“But more importantly, it was harmful to the Dylan Mulvaney brand. Now, other companies are going to think twice before sponsoring Dylan Mulvaney because they don’t want to lose $6 billion in market cap in two days. That’s what we got to do.
“And then once we make these things culturally toxic or as we’re making these symbols culturally toxic, we’ve got to bring in the cavalry, we’ve got to come back in with more political force to ban some of this stuff and to say no.” – Daily Wire host Michael Knowles.
Knowles appeared here last week when he declared that millennials should not have the right to vote.
Last month Knowles appeared here when he declared that the bible instructs us to burn books. Knowles, who has called for televising executions, previously declared that banning drag shows and burning books is “very American.”
Earlier this year Knowles declared from the CPAC stage that “transgenderism must be eradicated.”
Knowles performed in a gay sex scene for a college film.
Here’s a toxic flag…
Target Pulls Some Pride Items After MAGA Violence
And so the Christian Taliban maga brownshirts win. I have seen one of the videos of these extremists telling other shoppers that a rainbow shirt was from the devil and it was supporting child sex, question workers and other shoppers if they were Satanist or believed in god, talking of grooming kids, all this hyper anti-gay religious stuff. That video is below in the comments. These people have learned to be violent, like the maga that went into stores and threw beer out of the shelves and coolers. Instead of standing up to these domestic terrorist, these chain stores are giving in to them. Shades of 1930s Germany. Hugs
The Associated Press reports:
Target is removing certain items from its stores and making other changes to its LGBTQ merchandise nationwide ahead of Pride month, after an intense backlash from some customers including violent confrontations with its workers. “Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work,” Target said in a statement Tuesday.
”Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.” Target confirmed that it has moved its Pride merchandise from the front of the stores to the back in some Southern stores after confrontations and backlash from shoppers in those areas.
Target’s Pride month collection has also been the subject of several misleading videos in recent weeks, with social media users falsely claiming the retailer is selling “tuck-friendly” bathing suits designed for kids or in kids’ sizes.
Read the full article.
Great idea. It is a known fact that if you do what terrorists want, they will go away and never bother you again.
On the other hand, this Target employee is not backing down.
“Do you support the satanic pride agenda?”
“Mmhmm, both. Satan and Pride.”
This video is a year old. Not complaining, mind you because it shows the mindset of the Christian nut jobs who go around preaching hate. But it is not a recent event from this year.
That said there has been some hateful woman going around filming herself in Target screaming about LGBT merchandise. I saw one of her videos yesterday, can’t remember if it was here or on Reddit.
What a little weenie with his little agenda. What an wrongly righteous creep. I hope I don’t run into these kind of people anywhere. What idiocy for Christian grooming and Christian nationalist terrorism.
Hiding the Pride merchandise in the back of the store sure doesn’t scream PRIDE to me.
Yes and moving the merchandise will not placate the extremists. They won’t be satisfied until it’s been completely removed.
They are letting the domestic terrorists win.
National lobbyists drove anti-trans legislation in Florida, other states
‘Do No Harm’ has covered a lot of ground.Do No Harm, a nonprofit that launched last year to oppose diversity initiatives in medicine, has evolved into a significant leader in statehouses seeking to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths, producing model legislation that an Associated Press analysis found has been used in at least three states, including Florida.
The nonprofit, not widely known outside conservative medical and political circles, describes itself on its website as a collection of doctors and others uniting to “protect healthcare from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology.”
Founder Dr. Stanley Goldfarb is a kidney specialist and a professor emeritus and former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school. Goldfarb retired in 2021 and incorporated Do No Harm in January 2022.
Do No Harm initially focused on race in medical education and hiring. “The same radical movement behind ‘Critical Race Theory’ in the classroom and ‘Defund the Police’ is coming after healthcare, but hardly anyone knows it,” it warns on its website.
Goldfarb declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press but said in an email that “Do No Harm works to protect children from extreme gender ideology through original research, coalition-building, testimonials from parents and patients who’ve lived through deeply troubling experiences, and advocacy for the rigorous, apolitical study of gender dysphoria.”
The organization’s executive director, Kristina Rasmussen, previously was chief of staff to former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, and served as president of the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, according to her LinkedIn profile. Perhaps coincidentally, Rauner donated $250,000 to DeSantis’ former political committee.
An AP analysis of statehouse bills to restrict gender-affirming care for youths found passages identical or nearly identical to Do No Harm’s model legislation in Montana, Arkansas and Iowa.
The organization had lobbyists registered in 2022 in at least three states — Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee — and in Florida in 2023. People associated with the group have appeared as witnesses in statehouses, including Chloe Cole, 18, listed on its website as a “patient advocate” who has spoken to lawmakers about her gender-transition reversal.
In states including Florida, Idaho, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Ohio, Cole described her transition beginning at age 13, surgery to remove her breasts at 15, and stopping her transition a year later saying it was a mistake. Republican supporters of bills restricting or banning gender-affirming care often cite Cole’s story.
Cole told the Kansas news outlet The Reflector this year that Do No Harm was reimbursing her travel expenses as she testified before state lawmakers. She and her lawyer did not respond to requests for comment from the AP.
Do No Harm originally organized as a charitable organization whose tax-exempt status would be endangered by substantial lobbying.
On March 9 this year, after the group had already made significant inroads in legislatures with its model bill, lobbyists and hearing witnesses, it incorporated Do No Harm Action as a separate nonprofit with a tax status that allows for more lobbying, according to records obtained from the Virginia Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs.
Goldfarb did not respond directly to questions about Do No Harm’s lobbying, nor did another representative for the organization.
In the application for nonprofit status obtained from the Virginia agency, Do No Harm projected revenues of $910,000 in 2022, more than $1.1 million in 2023 and over $1.5 million in 2024.
The organization is so new that federal tax forms that typically reveal nonprofits’ spending details have been either not received or not processed.
It won a $250,000 award last year called the Gregor Peterson Prize. Its previous recipients include the Center for American Liberty, led by Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and who is representing Cole in her lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente over gender-transition treatments she now says she regrets. The prize was announced in December at a summit held by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a prominent provider of conservative model legislation.
Read the full article.
For those unaware, national groups like Do No Harm are behind the majority of anti-LGBTQ measures introduced by state lawmakers.
These groups provide templates for the bills, which state lawmakers then use either verbatim or slightly tweaked to fit state rules.
Do No Harm, like many of these groups, pays for witnesses to travel and testify before state legislatures.
On Do No Harm’s website, the group rages about “critical race theory” and the “anti-racism” movement.
Scottie's Playtime 