Posted on 04/24/2016 5:28:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Advocates of traditional family values are calling for a boycott of Target in response to the retail giant's announcement that they allow transgender people to use the restroom and dressing room that aligns with their preferred gender identity. The other way of saying this is that grown men have unrestricted and no-questions-asked access to bathrooms designated for women and girls.
Via their website, Target announced, "[W]e welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity. …Everyone deserves to feel like they belong."
Critics allege that this move is less common sense than nonsense by putting women and girls at risk of increased predation because sexually predatory men will use Target's policy to gain access to female victims. These are very serious concerns, and should not be minimized.
So how can we act to protect the most vulnerable in our society and actually effect change?
Three considerations to tamp down the hair-on-fire call to boycott Target:
1. While it is true that sexual predators exploit the freedom and trust in our society, predatory behavior remains illegal at all times in all places. Target is on notice that there is concern and fear that their policy invites predation. They should be given the opportunity to prove to be a good corporate citizen by announcing specific plans to insure the safety of all people while in their stores.
2. We need to step back and acknowledge what's actually happening on a larger scale and deeper level. The culture has shifted and nonsense has replaced common sense in many sectors. What was once considered absurd now demands not only accommodation but cultural adulation. That brings to the reality that transgender people feel as uncomfortable in a restroom that does not align with their gender identity as you feel with the idea of sharing a restroom with a person whose anatomy does not align with the sign on the door.
This is complicated and culturally contentious but raising the alert level to full-scale-screaming does not help. There is a clear contest underway in our culture: is gender a God-designed binary reality or is it a mutable fluid of the individual?
If Christians start boycotting every corporation that operates out of progressivism's politically-correct profit-motives, our choices are going to be very narrow, our voice further sidelined and our influence further diminished.
3. The boycott war is neither persuasive nor effective. States, colleges, professional sports associations, global corporations and performers have all joined the boycott of states whose laws require that in public environments, people use the restroom that corresponds with their birth certificate. So maybe boycotting Target is tit-for-tat turn-around-is-fair-play. But what does that accomplish?
Maybe a corporate engagement strategy through Target stock shareholders or a proactive campaign that seeks to fight predation of women and girls and addresses the dehumanizing abusive bullying of transgender people would yield superior results. The current boycott war is only driving us further apart from those with whom we disagree and those whose challenges we don't understand. (And yes, I'll be escorting my minor children to the bathroom while simultaneously exercising my second amendment right.)
Alternatives to a boycott:
How might we influence the conversation without threatening withdrawal and boycott? Is being further sidelined and isolated really the most effective approach for Christians who hope to positively influence the culture? How can we help insure every person's privacy and protection, including women, girls and transgender people? Is there a simple and reasonable accommodation that satisfies all concerned? What about the addition of single access, single occupancy restrooms or changing rooms?
Suggesting that boycotting Target misses the target is not to say that as consumers and citizens we should be silent or passive.
Each of us and all of us need to be proactive about our own protection: if you are a woman and you are by yourself and need to use the restroom or changing room, ask a female associate to monitor the facility. If a person who presents as male seeks entry, the Target employee should inform that customer that the facility is occupied and currently unavailable. If they can't wait, they could be directed to the single occupancy facility. If they protest, they should be informed that although their right to use the restroom or changing room of their choice is Target's policy, that policy holds for every guest and team member. And the guest or team member currently using the facility has asked for a reasonable accommodation of their safety. And if we're talking about your child, you should be in the facility with them at all times.
Instead of boycotting, why not call on Target to insure the safety of women and girls while they are also providing reasonable accommodation to transgender individuals? Instead of widening the chasm why not find the common concern of privacy and safety which stands at the center of concern for both groups?
If you'd like to weigh in personally, call Target Guest Relations at 1-800-440-0680. Share your concerns on their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/target.
“The stalls are in fact individual rooms (walled off from floor to ceiling), with a shared area with sinks & mirrors.”
may work for normal people, but for a person with devious intent - fully walled stalls (as I have seen in some store/resturaunt restrooms) can be unsafe for the normal customer.
If used at off peak store hours a woman or child can easily be followed and pushed into one and assaulted.
Also if a person is using the fully walled stall alone and has a medical issue, how will anyone know? It would take much longer for another customer coming in to notice, probably until the next time employees clean. Or if the lock gets stuck for young or old user and they have trouble getting out?
The perverts do not want unisex bathrooms.
They want the world to admit they are the sex they claim.
That’s exactly right. ANY accommodation is a losing game. Do we engage in vast civil construction projects to create safe spaces for the delusions and paranoia of the people suffering from schizophrenia? How is this any different?
So go shopping at Target. Fill up a cart with high-end stuff. Then wheel it to the customer service area and leave it there. Tell them you have to use a restroom but you don’t believe that the one Target provides is safe. Then waltz out the door.
They will have to expend “associate” resources re-stocking the shelves, and they’ll see the dollar amount of the sale that their policy has cost them.
I would only suggest that you fill the cart with non-food items. Depending on the manager’s whim of the day, they may order food items to be discarded since they have been handled, and I don’t hold with wasting food.
I have a portable toilet since I’ve had two hip replacements. I wonder if I should take the toilet with me into Target with a little curtain.
Good reason why this is a huge mistake.
I would suggest single stall rooms, floor to ceiling stalls, with an armed guard on duty to make sure that nobody accosted anybody to molest them and force them into the single stalls.
I have no shopped regularly in a Target for a long time, and frankly, this argument assures me that I made the correct decision.
It is going to take a lawsuit following a molestation to get some people to wake up.
What kind of security is in public bathrooms now? I avoid using them if at all possible. Usually mine are short trips to the stores, and I hold it until I get home.
What a milquetoast reaction. But of course so is the boycott knee-jerk reaction. I will continue to go where I please and do as I like. Any intrusion into my daughter’s privacy by degenerates will be dealt with swiftly.
How about simply not shopping at Target? Easy peasy.
When my daughter was little, i.e. still needed help in the bathroom, I took her a lot of places by myself. I would get a waitress or female manager to stand outside the men’s bathroom (after I verified it was empty) and prevent anyone entering while I took her in to go potty. They were always nice about it and eager to assist.
I told my wife that’s when I realized little kids are chick magnets. If I had been single I could have gotten a date everywhere we went.
Very weak ‘alternative’ from yet another compassionate Christian.
“The Alternative” from any state and/or business organization for these demanding advocates should have been setting up those blue roadside potties.
There should be bathrooms for Men only and Women only inside the store, and the roadside potties for “Others”, and have only their own transgender employees to clean these themselves.
And while I’m at it - Sorry, Target, you’ve lost my business.
It is not only for this issue but for cumulative pass policies that I am leaving. It is not as if I can’t find other alternatives for the stuff you sell.
I thought the Q stood for Queer...
It isn’t perfect but preferable to the free-for-all alternative. If need be, have a screen outside the bathroom showing the common area.
Not me. I'm a grandpa now. My granddaughters are three and six years old. When they do adult things with me, which is often, and they need to use a restroom I take them into a men's room and into the largest stall available.
ML/NJ
Trump is right. The Target/N.C. Bathroom issue is a loser on all counts—(principle and practicality) for conservatives. Here’s why.
1. Public bathrooms are a courtesy, not a right. As customers, we should be thankful for any accommodations stores provide and should politely say “thanks but no thanks” to any public bathrooms that do not meet our cultural or sanity standards.
2. To suggest that stores should keep private areas safe for children establishes a false sense of security and takes the onus off of parents to provide for the safety of their own children. Specifically, no parent should send young children into a bathroom unattended. Fathers should take their young children with them into the men’s bathroom or mothers should take their young children with them into the women’s bathroom.
3. There is no evidence that man/child sexual perversion is an issue for transgender people beyond the average norm.
4. Given the above, it makes more sense to be more concerned about other groups in public bathrooms than transgender people. For instance, currently, people on the sex abuse registry are not prohibited from public bathrooms.
4. Truth be told, people currently enter opposite sex bathroom for any number of reasons already, both good and bad. People often “commandeer” opposite sex bathrooms when their own bathrooms are out-of-order or there are long lines. People bring good sense and courtesy to these situations and they find a way to work it out. People with more nefarious purposes can hide out in bathrooms or dress to look like the opposite sex in order to commit crimes anyway. As is the conservative argument when it comes to firearms, registrations, policies, and rules do not keep bad people from doing bad things.
5. The North Carolina law is unenforceable and provides for no reasonable way it can be executed.
Bottom line...Public bathrooms can be bad places that should be avoided. If an emergency arises, customers enter public bathrooms at their own risk and should only do so in a very cautious manner.
>That brings to the reality that transgender people feel as uncomfortable in a restroom that does not align with their gender identity as you feel with the idea of sharing a restroom with a person whose anatomy does not align with the sign on the door.
So this means the feelings of of perverse disorders take priority over those of God-ordained sensibility?
>If Christians start boycotting every corporation that operates out of progressivism's politically-correct profit-motives, our choices are going to be very narrow, our voice further sidelined and our influence further diminished.
Really? Then why does big business fear the boyoctt of an even smaller minority?
States, colleges, professional sports associations, global corporations and performers have all joined the boycott of states whose laws require that in public environments, people use the restroom that corresponds with their birth certificate. So maybe boycotting Target is tit-for-tat turn-around-is-fair-play. But what does that accomplish?
So when the whole world worships the Beast then you would argue, "what does dissent from this accomplish?"
>Maybe... a proactive campaign that seeks to fight predation of women and girls...would yield superior results
Well, how about a boycott of store that foster this?
>and addresses the dehumanizing abusive bullying of transgender people.
How about addressing the dehumanizing abusive bullying of persons and businesses that essentially refuse to salute the flag of Sodom?
>Instead of boycotting, why not call on Target to insure the safety of women and girls while they are also providing reasonable accommodation to transgender individuals?
Why should accommodation, at the expense of God-ordained orientation, of any perverse destructive disordered be fostered? Is that ultimately honoring the Creator and helping the person and society according to His word?
Everybody on this thread is missing the point to this whole thing.
If we're at the point that we're defending our children against the mainstreaming of the transvestite lifestyle, (which won't be successful)....
Then we've already lost!
The "long march through the institutions" is now complete.
Target = Dayton Hudson = Liberal Democrat
They’ve also donated to Planned Parenthood and have been on my personal boycott list for decades. However you feel about transgender bathrooms, any money you spend at Target is eventually going toward left-wing causes. Do you like your own money spent on causes you object to? Then don’t shop at Target. It’s that simple.
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