Seven AGs Warn Target Of Possible Child-Protection Violations
LGBT Pride Month might be over, but the backlash against Target’s controversial in-store displays continues.
The retailer faced boycotts and social media ridicule as far back as May for promoting a range of products promoting transgenderism and other LGBT causes, including some aimed directly at children.
In response to the public opprobrium, some stores removed certain items and relocated the “Pride” section to a less prominent area.
Now, the company is on the receiving end of more serious claims, as detailed in a letter written by seven attorneys general from GOP-led states across the United States. Specifically, the letter to Target Corporation Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell advises that the displays might have been illegal.
“As Attorneys General committed to enforcing our States’ child-protection and parental-rights laws and our States’ economic interests as Target shareholders, we are concerned by recent events involving the company’s ‘Pride’ campaign,” they wrote. “Our concerns entail the company’s promotion and sale of potentially harmful products to minors, related potential interference with parental authority in matters of sex and gender identity, and possible violation of fiduciary duties by the company’s directors and officers.”
Some of the items mentioned directly in the letter include a shirt picturing a guillotine labeled a “homophobe headrest” and another that showed a skull with the caption “transphobe collector.”
The authors of the letter went on to describe these and other LGBT displays as “potentially harmful to minors” and a “possible violation of fiduciary duties by the company’s directors and officers,” adding that such inappropriate merchandise could interfere “with parental authority in matters of sex and gender identity.”
Furthermore, the attorneys general referenced Target’s vocal support of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network as a cause for concern in connection with the child-protection and parental-rights laws of their respective states.
“GLSEN furnishes resources to activists for the purpose of undermining parents’ constitutional and statutory rights by supporting ‘secret gender transitions for kids,’” they wrote.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita provided the primary endorsement for the letter, which was also signed by his counterparts in Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Idaho, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
