Dear MoveOn member,
News just broke that a few weeks before Pride 2024 is set to begin, Target is abandoning the LGBTQ+ community AGAIN by not selling Pride Merch in HALF of its stores this year.1 Unfortunately, this isn’t new. This is a pattern of Target’s caving to bigots, homophobes, and transphobes. Just one week before Pride Month was set to begin in 2023, Target caved to an orchestrated attack by anti-LGBTQ+ bigots and pulled items from its 2023 Pride merch collection—which featured items produced by small businesses owned by queer and trans creators, designers, and artists—off their shelves.2 It is completely unacceptable for Target to abandon these communities to appease right-wing extremists.
Right-wing extremists have said themselves that their goal is to make Pride toxic for companies.3 That they want to eradicate LGBTQ+ people from public life.4 We won’t let them. We are here, and we aren’t going anywhere.
Just this year alone, across the U.S., Republicans have introduced 515 (and counting) violent, abusive, and hateful anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state legislatures, many of which have already passed.5 Our community is under attack every single day. LGBTQ+ people, especially trans and nonbinary people, have faced rising threats and acts of violence due to the constant dehumanization at the hands of Republican legislators across the country.6
Target can’t claim to support its LGBTQ+ team members and customers but do so only when it’s convenient or profitable to them. By removing Pride merch from its stores, Target is enabling bigots and emboldening right-wing extremists. And it’s sending a very clear and harmful message to LGBTQ+ communities that the company will abandon us when it counts, and that we should hide our identities when confronted with bigotry. Pride is about living and loving boldly and unapologetically, and if Target wants to continue to boast about supporting their LGBTQ+ team members and customers, reinstating its Pride merch is the floor, not the ceiling.
If Target really cares about the LGBTQ+ community, it will stop caving to anti-LGBTQ+ bigots and reinstate Pride merch in ALL stores to support our communities.
Last year, Target’s Pride collection featured, uplifted, and amplified LGBTQ+ small businesses, creators, artists, and designers, many of whom were so excited that their work and products would be featured by a household name like Target. But the second that anti-LGBTQ+ bigots pushed back, Target caved and abandoned these creators and our communities.
Corporations like Target participate in “rainbow capitalism” to sell their products to the LGBTQ+ community, but then they abandon our communities the minute they are faced with backlash from right-wing extremists. It’s unacceptable.
By removing Pride merchandise, Target is sending a message that bigots are welcome at Target and that LGBTQ+ people and their family, friends, and loved ones are not. The decision further puts Target’s LGBTQ+ employees and customers at risk of harassment and danger by drawing a line of who is protected, who is supported, and who is heard. LGBTQ+ Target employees and customers should not have to worry if Target will have their back if they experience discrimination and bigotry in its stores.
This is a major step backward in terms of making sure LGBTQ+ people are safe and celebrated in public, and we cannot and will not allow bigots, homophobes, and transphobes to viciously erase LGBTQ+ people from this country. We all have to be in this together, in solidarity with all LGBTQ+ folks—especially Black, brown, and Indigenous LGBTQ+ people. The LGBTQ+ community deserves the right to feel safe and supported everywhere. Target has a responsibility to do what is right, starting with reinstating its Pride merch NOW.
Thanks!
–Jensine, Nakia, Alexis, Rahna, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “Target Will Not Sell Pride Merchandise in Half Its U.S. Stores This Year,” Them, May 10, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/193163?t=8&akid=388680%2E37680734%2Eakj6Bt
2. “Conservatives are making Pride merch ‘toxic.’ Their real goal is much worse,” MSNBC, May 27, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/173189?t=10&akid=388680%2E37680734%2Eakj6Bt
3. “Target quietly moves Pride merchandise in some stores as conservative activists declare victory,” NBC News, May 24, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/173190?t=12&akid=388680%2E37680734%2Eakj6Bt
4. “CPAC Speaker Michael Knowles Says ‘Transgenderism Must Be Eradicated,'” Them, March 6, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/173191?t=14&akid=388680%2E37680734%2Eakj6Bt
5. “Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures in 2024,” ACLU, May 7, 2024
https://act.moveon.org/go/187610?t=16&akid=388680%2E37680734%2Eakj6Bt
6. “Experts warn against canceling Pride campaigns after extremists threaten Target,” ABC News, May 30, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/173193?t=18&akid=388680%2E37680734%2Eakj6Bt
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