Don't Boycott Target Over Transgender Bathroom Issue: Here's a Better Alternative

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?

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.)

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.

[[3. The boycott war is neither persuasive nor effective.]]

BS! JCPenney years ago began supporting some gay agenda- they were boycotted, and before long they lost so much money in sales that they they dropped their public support for the issues

Ford Motor corporation ran support for some gay agenda, and Ford was heavily boycotted and they lost so much in sales they were forced to drop their public support-

Boycott DOES work but it needs enough people to stop the ignorant ‘it can’t work’ attitude and join forces and make it work- That is where the Tea Party should come in, organizing massive boycott across the country- Believe me, when Target has to start closing shops all around the country because they have lost too many sales to stay viable any longer, they WILL change their attitude=-

The problem with this country these datys is that good people are NOT doing anything anymore, and therefore evil thrives in the absence of correct responses- and hte more evil thrives, the further and further they will push us- Heck- we’ve been pushed so far that we’re now even having to discuss whether or not men should be allowed to use a woman’s bathroom? Absolute insanity! Had we acted, through the tea party, right off the bat- this wouldn’t even be an issue anymore because businesses that do such things would not survive financially-

At the very least, everyone who is just taken aback and revolted by Target’s policy should call their Target Guest Relations at 1-800-440-0680 and tell them that this substantially changes their willingness to shop there.

Thanks. I called (press 1 for store experience) and expressed the following.

Hello. I understand that the policy of Target is to welcome people to use whichever "restroom or fitting room facility" they feel "corresponds to their gender identity," since "everyone deserves to feel like they belong." However, this is Biblically immoral and means making many women feel like they do not belong because they are uncomfortable with allowing men in their bathroom. Therefore according to your own judgment they and others who disagree with this policy do not belong in your store, and I myself have joined the many others who have decided to the boycott against shopping at Target. And I discourage others from so doing, and encourage them to join the boycott of Target due to its immoral inclusive yet exclusive policy.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. (1 Timothy 1:15)

Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out... (Acts 3:19)

The Asian (it seems) young lady was very nice, and stated that not everyone who worked at Target agreed with that policy, however she could not give her personal opinion (but the tone was apologetic), but that she would surely pass on my comment, and simply asked for my first and last name, which I do not think is in their system anyway.

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.

Staples stores are also a a courtesy, saying "no thanks" to those that do not meet our cultural/moral standards is an extension of saying "no thanks" to bathrooms that do not. Boycotting a store based on its policies is what big business seem to fear when the Left threatens it, so why is it dismissed by conservatives?

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.

2. To suggest that stores should NOT keep private areas safe for children fosters a real sense of insecurity and takes the onus off of businesses to provide for the safety of their own customers. Perhaps Playboy and the like should be stocked at the child level racks. After all, it is the job of parents to police their children, or avoid stores that do not meet their our cultural/moral standards

However, the boycott is not simply about children, or even must include them, as it is practicing by extension the reasoning of your first argument, for the issue includes subjecting the majority of women (at least) to discomfort (due to healthy normative Biblical feelings) in order to accommodate the feelings of a minority with a perverse disorder. A $solution would be to create a third bathroom for the latter, and which would not be shameful since their orientation is what they overall are encouraged to take pride in.

3. There is no evidence that man/child sexual perversion is an issue for transgender people beyond the average norm.

The percentage of transgendered persons is too minute to make that a meaningful statement, while the issue is not simply restricted to them, but that the Target policy is inclusive of anyone who feels like this bathroom "corresponds with their gender identity." Examples of what Target's policy can lead to: NY Daily News: Seattle man undresses in women's locker room at local pool to test new transgender bathroom rule; Life Site News: Sexual predator jailed after claiming to be ‘transgender’ to assault women in shelter. And this is only the beginning.

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.

Given the above, people should boycott store that that do not meet our cultural/moral or sanity standards, which is the very thing you labor to dismiss.

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.registrations, policies, and rules do not keep bad people from doing bad things.

"Good sense and courtesy" means you do not sanction making women or children uncomfortable by allowing men in their bathroom. And overall your reasoning presumes people will act "reasonable," which is subjective without a supreme and sure moral standard that defines morality, even if somewhat subject to interpretation. And it is the Bible as being that standard that is being implicitly attacked. Consistent with that rejection, the LGBT movement manifests that what is "reasonable" to them is promoting and requiring acceptance and advocation of perverse disordered "orientation" and actions.

People with more nefarious purposes can hide out in bathrooms or dress to look like the opposite sex in order to commit crimes anyway.

But which is not the same thing as fostering it, under the premise that whatever gender you perversely feel you like gives you the right to use the corresponding facility. Thus your argument fails to both justify enabling anyone to use whatever gender-specific bathroom they feel like, and to invalidate the boycotting of stores which sanction this immoral confusion.

As is the conservative argument when it comes to firearms,

No, but if you re going to make that poor analogy, no sane advocate of the second amendment advocates letting persons to use the shooting range based upon their estimation of themselves and degree of comfort, and how the gun may be used besides shooting at the target.

5. The North Carolina law is unenforceable and provides for no reasonable way it can be executed.

Of course it is enforceable and executable, since it enables stores to prevent manifest males from using the women's room, and enables the state to punish those who do.

Thus both you and Trump are wrong, and which superficial reasoning in effect censures those true conservatives who boycott stores which support that which fosters Biblical immorality.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.