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People around the world come together to honor and support LGBTQ communities during Pride Month. In recent years, many businesses have joined the movement by adding Pride-themed branding to their merchandise, logos, and advertising throughout June.
But it doesn’t always go so well. Target recently removed some of its gender-affirming clothing from store shelves after receiving threats impacting the safety and well-being of its sales staff.
Straight Arrow News contributor Jordan Reid says if companies like Target can’t stand the heat, they never should’ve gone into the kitchen.
In recent months, companies such as Bud Light and Target have come under right-wing fire for their support of the LGBTQ community. Target, for example, had been offering gender-affirming merchandise such as a bathing suit created for trans women, and unsurprisingly, right-wing shoppers were super not into it and let their not-into-it-ness be known. In response, Target has apparently removed the bulk of their Pride merchandise from stores after “threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being.”
Customers viewing the items have apparently knocked down displays, behaved aggressively towards employees and posted threatening videos to social media from inside the stores.
Now, I’m not of the opinion that brands necessarily have the responsibility to declare political alliances, but if you’re going to explicitly support the LGBTQ community, support them. If you’re selling merchandise, hoping to capitalize on the spending power of a group, and then immediately pull back because a small group of bullies — whose actions are, by the way, a visceral demonstration of why Pride Month is important — I mean, to me, it’s almost worse than never entering the conversation at all. Inserting social values into the capitalist structure is always going to be awkward at best, but still, pulling Pride merchandise off the shelves — really? Do better.
