Target announced earlier this week that the company was removing some LGBTQ-themed items from shelves and moving displays intended to honor Pride Month to the back of the store in response to a public backlash from the right. But what happened at Target goes far beyond just some people calling for a boycott.
As Target explained in a statement, some customers had knocked down Pride displays at stores while others outraged by Pride-themed merchandise angrily approached workers as well as posted threatening videos on social media. Target has been celebrating Pride Month for more than a decade, but as the company noted, “since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”
For those who doubly identify as LGBTQ and Muslim, this new method of attack is a sore reminder of the harm this relentless conservative effort to marginalize them is capable of.
These physical threats of violence are deeply alarming — but not that surprising. They are the expected, and even intended, result of the concerted campaign by both Republican-elected officials and leading conservative voices to make all things LGBTQ-related “toxic.” They also strike a nerve for other communities, such as my own Muslim American community, whose members have experienced the wrath and concerted attacks from conservatives with similar objectives — to alienate, make toxic and further marginalize from mainstream society — in the past. And for those who doubly identify as LGBTQ and Muslim, this new method of attack is a sore reminder of the harm this relentless conservative effort to marginalize them is capable of.
“The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands,” right-wing commentator Matt Walsh wrote on Twitter. That sentiment was reiterated by conservative outlet Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles, who urged his listeners “to make that symbol toxic, the pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic.”
2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy slammed Target while on Fox News for choosing to “spit in” the face of conservatives, declaring that “Target just put a target on its back from its base of consumers.”
Conservative radio host Charlie Kirk declared on his show the same day Target announced that some employees had been threatened: “The only thing they understand is force” — “they” presumably meaning proponents of LGBTQ representation. Kirk urged his audience to inflict financial “pain” on Target by pushing to bankrupt the conglomerate, saying, “Pain is a teacher and the pain of crossing the line to perverting our children and grooming them, it’s going to be a lesson I hope corporate America watches because ordinary America is pushing back.”
Republican state legislators in 2023 introduced a record number of bills designed to otherize the LGBTQ community, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The legislation proposed and enacted ranges from bans on gender-affirming care for transgender teenagers to banning books that address LGBTQ issues to rolling back “nondiscrimination laws by allowing employers, businesses, and even hospitals to turn away LGBTQ people or refuse them equal treatment.”
The real-world impact is not just stores like Target being bullied but also self-censorship out of fear that some will violate these laws. Since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his original so-called Don’t Say Gay law in 2022, some Florida teachers, out of fear of losing their teaching licenses, have erred on the side of removing entire shelves of books that even sightly touch on LGBTQ topics. Some decided not to form LGBTQ clubs in schools given the law.
This is the climate the GOP and their media allies have nurtured. And they won’t stop as long as they believe weaponizing the LGBTQ community helps them politically — even if it leads to a spike in hate crimes against the LGBTQ community. I can say that with great certainty because I saw the GOP do this to my own community of Muslim Americans.
Republican state legislators in 2023 introduced a record number of bills designed to otherize the LGBTQ community, according to the ACLU.
The extreme voices on the right did their best to make anything Muslim inherently toxic. For example, GOP members of Congress in 2009 claimed that Muslim American organizations were planting “spies” as interns in congressional offices. Other members of Congress including then-Rep. Michele Bachmann spread Islamophobic rumors that Muslims were “infiltrating” the government. The goal was to keep us out of American politics.
Some on the right even demanded in 2007 that Urban Outfitters stop selling fabrics bearing the pattern of the Arabic scarf known as a kaffiyeh because they claimed it was tied to terrorism. Like Target, Urban Outfitters gave in to the bigots, pulling the item “due to the sensitive nature” of the scarf while apologizing “if we offended anyone.”
It wasn’t long until GOP officials and activists began to peddle the lie that Muslim Americans wanted to impose Islamic law (Shariah law). In response, Republicans in state legislatures introduced a swath of anti-Shariah legislation. (Muslim Americans never wanted to impose our religious beliefs as law, as opposed to the GOP, which is literally doing that today with its abortion bans.)
By the 2016 presidential campaign, the groundwork was set for Donald Trump to take anti-Muslim bigotry to new dangerous lows, from his lies that Muslims in New Jersey cheered on 9/11 to calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country. The very alarming result was that hate crimes against Muslims in 2016 reached a higher level than in the year after 9/11 — from attacks on our places of worship to physical assaults against our community to an increase in anti-Muslim bullying in school.
That was the climate the GOP helped foster then for Muslims — and I’m seeing plenty of parallels today in response to the LGBTQ community. That is why it’s not surprising that in March, armed white supremacists and members of several extremist groups, including some offering Nazi salutes, targeted a drag queen storytelling event in Ohio. In California, members of the Trump-centric Proud Boys disrupted a similar event by screaming anti-LGBTQ slurs. The physical confrontation at Target of employees or knocking down of Pride Month displays is another warning sign.
Conservatives’ goal of making Pride merchandise “toxic” is not just bigoted, and it’s not just about merchandise. Ultimately, conservatives and GOP leaders saw that anti-Muslim hate was a losing strategy. We need to show them that anti-LGBTQ bigotry will not help them. Only then will they stop.
CORRECTION (May 29, 2023, 6:30 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the first name of a former member of Congress. She is Michele Bachmann, not Michelle.
CORRECTION (May 31, 2023, 1:05 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the year some demanded Urban Outfitters stop selling fabrics bearing the pattern of the kaffiyeh. It was in 2007, not 2011.
