“Target Corporation is partnering with a K-12 education group for which focuses on getting districts to adopt policies that will keep parents in the dark on their child’s in-school gender transition, providing sexually explicit books to schools for free, and integrating gender ideology at all levels of curriculum in public schools…”GLSEN leads the movement in creating affirming… and anti-racist spaces for LGBTQIA+ students. We are proud of 10+ years of collaboration with GLSEN and continue to support their mission,” Target said. The retail giant provides annual donations to GLSEN. GLSEN calls for gender ideology to be integrated into all classes, even math. It provides educators instructions on how they can make math “more inclusive of trans and non-binary identities” by including “they/them” pronouns in word problems. In another example, GLSEN recommended that teachers intervene if students are making graphs about sex and gender to ensure it includes the ideology supported by GLSEN. “When students are creating their own surveys, if they want to include data for biological sex, teachers need to be sure they include both intersex and other as choices.””[A]nd if the students want to include data for gender, a variety of choices need to be included, such as agender, genderfluid, female, male, nonbinary, transman, transwoman, and other,” a lesson plan continued….
To date, the retail giant has donated at least $2.1 million to GLSEN, which offers districts and students guidance on how to hide gender transitions from parents.
For example, its policy for districts said, “[The local education agency] shall ensure that all personally identifiable and medical information relating to transgender and nonbinary students is kept confidential… Staff or educators shall not disclose any information that may reveal a student’s gender identity to others, including parents or guardian… This disclosure must be discussed with the student, prior to any action.”
Corporations have many of the same rights as individuals, and if Target wants to contribute to an organization that guides schools to conspire against parents and indoctrinate students into LGBTQ+ ideology and political agendas against the wishes of their parents (where doing so is legal), it has that right. Similarly, I have the right, and, I believe, the ethical obligation to ensure that none of my money finds its way to GLSEN or any similarly unethical organization through Target.
Target is an ethics corrupter.
So I will not be patronizing either of the local Target outlets within ten minutes of my Alexandria, Virginia home, and will dutifully inform as many people as I can about exactly what they are supporting when they shop there.
Then they are free to make their own decisions.
And I will make my own decisions about them based on those decisions.
Ethics Alarms 
Minneapolis based. Where all the corporations are above average. I think it’s safe to say, as I’ve heard it said of Denmark, if Sharia law were on the ballot for Minneapolis voters to adopt as the law of Minneapolis, they’d vote for it.
Could be Target is trying to stave off a repeat of this:
Look What Trump Supporters Are Doing To This Poor Target
Comments should provide a chuckle
Someone actually posted pictures of the aftermath of this after the looters had left and tried to claim it was done by conservatives or MAGA types. I imagine a few uninformed dullards may have fallen for this lie.
“Someone actually posted pictures of the aftermath of this after the looters had left and tried to claim it was done by conservatives or MAGA types.”
Oy! “This world’s been shaved by a drunken barber’s hand” – W.B. Yeats
Yeats was Jewish?
Jack
After retiring from Corporate America I did some counseling. The only thing I promised my clients was to give them the benefit of my knowledge and experience. What they did with that information was entirely up to them.
Seems to me that is all you are doing. You provide a valuable information service to your readers. What we as readers choose to do is entirely up to us.
Last month I quit Disney + and told them I didn’t care for their woke programming and agenda. Regarding Target I am relatively certain I can get all of my needs met without frequenting their store. I intend to inform Target local and corporate of my decision to not finance their politics. I think it is important to make it clear to idiots and bullies that you don’t approve of their behavior and are standing up to them.
“Last month I quit Disney + and told them I didn’t care for their woke programming and agenda. Regarding Target I am relatively certain I can get all of my needs met without frequenting their store. I intend to inform Target local and corporate of my decision to not finance their politics.”
Ha same here. We did so after spending a weekend (re-)watching all of Disney’s old movies. I’m trying to talk the wife into boycotting Target completely; I’ve always despised them
“Last month I quit Disney + and told them I didn’t care for their woke programming and agenda. Regarding Target I am relatively certain I can get all of my needs met without frequenting their store. I intend to inform Target local and corporate of my decision to not finance their politics.”
Ha same here. We did so after spending a weekend (re-)watching all of Disney’s old movies. I’m trying to talk the wife into boycotting Target completely; I’ve always despised them
The reason some of us felt that walking away from Target or any other store that decided to carry large new with controversial, albeit legal, messages was not unethical bullying was because consumers want to patronize stores that suggest by its actions that it shares common beliefs and values .
How many businesses hopped on the Green bandwagon and claimed the gave a portion of their profits to environmental causes. They never mentioned how much or who they actually donated to but the suggestion was enough to get people to view these firms in a more favorable location light.
When the firm makes a decision that alienates the larger group of patrons, unless it holds considerable monopolistic power, it is understandable and even foreseeable that significant numbers of patrons may choose to buy elsewhere.
Target, as a retailer of general merchandise, has virtually no market power other than it’s basic value proposition which is derived from how it merchandises its wares and how it is viewed as a corporate citizen. It really blew the latter when it became known that it’s partner that created the controversial merchandise is also a promoter of Satanic worship; some of its offerings say God may hate you but Satan loves you. This does not sit well even with agnostics.
The question I have is are these decision being made because the management believes in these causes or is management forced by its capital providers to adopt their values which are inconsistent with a large swath of consumer decision makers?
In my estimation, the whole strategy to give some amount of its profits to “worthy” causes has morphed into outright advocacy of the latest social trend. It’s one thing to fund projects that give people a warm and fuzzy feeling but they are finding out that funding groups, that for many, who have a substantial negative sentiment when it involves children is in direct contradiction to the mindset created by simply following trends rather than analyzing them.
Damn phone
Line in the first paragraph should read “carry a line with controversial, albeit legal messages”
I agree.
It is one thing to sell a variety of products that are legal to sell, even if I think they are silly, for lack of a better word (tuckable kids swim suits).
It is another thing to have a work culture that makes my eyes roll (making George Floyd, who was a “victim,” into some sort of “hero” in order to placate the race-hustlers).
It is quite another thing to support policies and entities that I disagree with (or simply don’t agree with, or find questionable or ill-advised).
I can overlook the first item, because they are just doing their business in providing products to the market.
I can overlook the second one because I don’t have to work for them. If the employment practice is not illegal, it is up to the employees to decide if they will work there.
The third one is definitely problematic because the company is going beyond its business of selling items to advocating and funding for things that I don’t support. It is not part of their business and I may not want to support someone who takes active steps to advocate for policies I oppose.
I like Target. I like a lot of their product offerings and prices (I am mainly talking about their grocery offerings). I have patronized them for more than 40 years.
But, Target is not special or irreplaceable.
I can go elsewhere.
And, maybe I will….
-Jut
I am deliberative by nature. I also attempt to be open-minded, seeing multiple sides of issues. As I did some deep digging on Target and its policies, I thought sharing some information, personal assumptions, and conclusions from my investigations would be beneficial. While I cannot confirm this, it appears that Target’s embrace of woke culture and philanthropy may be a 2019 development. I will not speculate as to Target’s motivation. Is it a strategic decision to appeal to the woke segment of the market? Is it virtue signaling by the Board? Is it appeasement of activist woke investors? All the above?
Regardless of the motivation I did find it personally distasteful that if you look at a Target retail site, they proudly announce they give back 5% of their profits to the community. It takes a bit of digging to understand that the local children’s hospital, senior center, Little League, Lions Club, Girl Scouts, or volunteer fire department aren’t seeing any of Target’s cash. Target’s giving seems to center on woke agenda causes. I support a corporation’s right to legally do anything they want with its profits. I however take a dim view of using deception to mislead customers.
In my deep dive into Target’s philanthropy, it appears that they have relied heavily on the services of Article One Consultants, a San Francisco-based firm whose founders learned their trade working for BSR, a multinational organization whose stated mission is “to work with business to create a just and sustainable world”.
https://www.bsr.org/
I will leave it to others to draw their own conclusions regarding these businesses and organizations.
https://corporate.target.com/sustainability-esg
https://corporate.target.com/sustainability-ESG/target-foundation
I found Article One’s website regarding their team’s bios and the consultancy’s focus to be interesting. It seemed somewhat myopic but that could just be me.
https://articleoneadvisors.com/our-team/
Suffice it to say, I did due diligence in evaluating my decision to stop doing business with Target. I am now more committed than before that I will go out of my way to not buy from Target again.
Jack,
I posted a commentary that that word press thinks is spam. I guess I included too many links.
I will try again without the hyperlinks.
It’s up. Sorry I took so long to get back to the blog. Tough day.
Now, there are dozens of Target stores that have received bomb threats for pulling the ‘pride’ themed merchandise. This illustrates my point of why those items were there in the first place. Of course, the FBI is not going to investigate and those responsible are not going to be prosecuted as domestic terrorists.
I am waiting to see if the banks report all customers who don’t make a purchase at Target during pride month to the FBI.