LGBT Activists Debate New Tactics To Counter Effective Boycotts of Woke Companies Like Target

They will accept nothing less than the full acceptance of their perverse agenda. Boycott ALL woke corporations. Hit 'em where it hurts!

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

So far, the leading response seems to be doubling down on their existing demands.

As America enters LGBT “Pride” Month yet again this year, LGBT activists find themselves reassessing their tactics to ensure corporate fealty to their ideology in the face of rising pushback from conservative Americans.

In recent years, mainstream U.S. brands have signaled their devotion to “pride” in various ways, from public statements and rainbow logos to financial support for left-wing groups and even political advocacy against conservative policies. Conservative and religious Americans’ patience with such antics has thinned accordingly, most recently manifesting in boycotts against Bud Light for affirming the “womanhood” of “transgender” male influencer Dylan Mulvaney and Target for selling LGBT merchandise, including for children, some of which it has since pulled under pressure.

The success of these efforts is now causing LGBT activists to second-guess their strategies, the Associated Press reports.

“Now’s not the time to back down,” said Brian K. Bond, executive director of the pro-LGBT group PFLAG. “I think both business and us as citizens need to look within ourselves into new strategies. The old models aren’t necessarily working.”

Ideas under consideration so far include counter-boycotts and letter-writing campaigns urging Target not to submit to conservative critics, according to Pride Northwest executive director Debra Porta. “Because the news is fairly new, more actions may be announced, especially as Pride Month gets here,” she said.

“We need a strategy on how to deal with corporations that are experiencing enormous pressure to throw LGBTQ people under the bus,” declared California Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener (a homosexual activist who in the past has suggested “Drag Queen 101 as part of the K-12 curriculum”). “We need to send a clear message to corporate America that if you’re our ally — if you are truly our ally — you need to be our ally, not just when it’s easy but also when it’s hard.”

The story comes as Target shares hit a three-year low of $126.75, prompting JPMorgan Chase & Co. to downgrade Target stock this week from “overweight” to “neutral,” Fox Business reports.

Of course, it remains to be seen how many conservative customers can be roused to stay away from Target over an extended period of time; conservative U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) recently questioned how sustainable the boycott of the retail giant could be given that “historically, conservatives have typically been not very good at boycotts,” while expressing hope that the backlash so far has “made a real impression on the Target executives” toward companies eventually “get[ting] back to selling their d— products and keep their idiotic politics out of our lives.”

Left-wing activists also have backing them a compliant mainstream media promoting LGBT orthodoxy and neglecting to report the most controversial aspects of these controversies, as well as institutionalized incentives for corporations to “go woke,” such as so-called “environmental, social, and corporate governance” (ESG) standards in the financial sector.

ESG, essentially a scoring system that incentivizes investing in companies not on the basis of their performance for customers and shareholders but rather on their fealty to so-called “social justice” principles such as diversity and environmentalism, is one of the reasons why so many companies adopt controversial ideological stands and attempt to influence public policy on issues such as homosexuality, transgenderism, race relations, and abortion.

However, there are also conservatives doing more to fight back than in the past.

Nineteen states – Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming – have formed a coalition to collectively agree to resist ESG standards in a variety of ways, such as banning their use in state pension-fund investment decisions, banning the use of “social credit scores” in banking and lending practices, and banning ideological discrimination against customers by financial institutions.