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.
I think I saw that movie.....
Travis, I feel the same way myself.
The most fun I have had in Target in the past is wearing a concealed Kimber 3” .45 when in the store. Nothing like breaking the rules/wishes of this cheese eating surrender monkey owned business. Not that I will be walking into one of their stores in the future.
More compromise and appeasement. We do not need to “understand” Target or the perverts they have enabled. This is NOT a complicated social issue with a host of subtle nuances that need to be dissected under a microscope. This is simply another attempt by the Humanist Left to usurp Nature and redefine “normal.” And a tale of the corporate cowardice that empowers a miniscule collection of sexual deviants by risking the sanctity of our children.
Target has demonstrated that in a battle of morality, they stand with the forces of evil. A boycott is a fitting and proper response to that stance.
Simply require the person to be dressed as the gender they are ‘identifying’ as that day. That will solve the problem.
Predators hide behind the mask of being normal productive citizens, its how they gain trust and access to targets. Making them dress as a transvestite to be allowed in the womens room would put a damper on random dudes camping in the ladies room for sure.
My female co-workers describe much worse conditions in the ladies’ room, so I won’t guess as to who is more gross. I simply mentioned it as a working solution.
One of the big, unstated secrets is that the type of men that want to use the women’s restrooms really, really, really hate women for being naturally what they aren’t. So they walk in and find their ‘nemesis’ (real women) in, shall we say, compromising positions and their aggressive nature will get the better of them.
Lots of lib women now saying they are uncomfortable with men in their bathrooms, not that it would be enough to make them back off their talking points, though.
Target should be run out of business. They are the enemies of America and Christians everywhere.
Good for you; it is a solution that works with one of the densest populations of sexual deviants in the world.
“I would even go to the point of getting a license to carry a concealed weapon if the state I lived in allows that.”
Target’s official policy is to no allow CC in its stores. Its CEO says:
” it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create.”
Isn’t that a laugh? Allowing perverts into women’s restrooms allows a ‘family-friendly’ experience?
https://corporate.target.com/article/2014/07/target-addresses-firearms-in-stores
I trust appropriately gendered Target **Security** personnel like I trust the TSA.
I would guess that the vast majority of Target shoppers are women. My wife and her friends love Target. My wife will no longer be driving the extra few miles to shop at Target. I’m sure most women are concerned about this insanity too.
I started my Target boycott when they banned the Salvation Christmas bell ringers.
Me too! These PC retailers do this BECAUSE people don’t refuse to shop at their stores.
Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
‘Til there are no rich no more
I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBAwv49slC8
OK, I have read this column several times. It seems that the “better alternative” is to trust Target to provide security in their toilet rooms.
Really?
Target hasn’t offered any plan for doing that, but we’re just supposed to trust them? We’re supposed to believe there will be Target employees who will drop what they’re doing to come into the toilet room and kick somebody out?
That ain’t gonna happen. This column is not well thought out.
That would settle the science for me. I’d never walk in that store.
heck, Saudi Arabia could ban LGBT from using the wrong bathroom and the LGBT would not complain. O wait, they kill LGBT people, where is the anger there> too busy hunting down Christians to bake you a cake LGBT?
Businesses will either pay for it or close; that was how “non-smoking” sections were developed.
It may not be a perfect solution, but it works.
Just by requiring less space it could be CHEAPER. One restroom is maintained instead of two.
As for cameras, why would that be an issue in an area solely composed of sinks, mirrors, and trashcans? It would alleviate security issues people have raised (and they wouldn’t be in the individual “rooms”).
The San Francisco solution is much better than a free-for-all in which weirdos can opt for the opposite gender’s bathrooms; THAT is creepy.
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