The Patriot Post® · Stay on Target

Target’s slogan is “Expect more.” And when it comes to safety, customers do. That’s why Americans are so upset with the company’s outrageous April policy that threw open the changing room and bathroom doors to anyone of either sex. Almost immediately, angry calls started streaming into to stores, eventually ballooning into a nationwide protest of more than 1.3 million people. If other CEOs were considering similar changes, they saw the heat Target was taking and backed off.

Now, almost two months into their transgender free-for-all, the outcry shows no signs of dying down. At [Wednesday’s] Target shareholders meeting in Costa Mesa, protestors filled the streets outside with signs to boycott the store. “We’re not afraid of transgender people,” one of the demonstrators explained. “I’ve got nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and I’m worried that perverts will pretend to be women so they can get into women’s restroom.” With its profits in the gender-free toilet, Target CEO Brian Cornell was on the hot seat with investors for the decision, which analysts say has cost the retailer more than $4.5 billion — and counting.

Worried about crashing stocks, Cornell was pressed about the negative fallout from the unpopular policy. He insisted (with a straight face) that there was none. “Zero correlation, zero effect,” he declared. That’s a convenient response, but not a truthful one. As everyone on Wall Street knows, Target’s stocks have taken a nearly 20-percent nosedive since April 19, when the change was announced. If there was zero correlation, why are Walmart and online retailers holding steady? Clearly, the boycott — the most successful in American Family Association’s history — is having an enormous impact on Target’s bottom line. But, much like Starbucks’s CEO, who doggedly stuck by his company’s anti-marriage campaign, Cornell made it known that he didn’t care what consumers’ think.

Abraham Hamilton III was at the meeting representing AFA and said he was blown away by Target’s indifference. “It’s amazing. The response really was, ‘We don’t care what you have to say. We don’t care what the American Family Association represents. We don’t care what those people who signed your petition represent. We are committed to the complete overhaul of American society as it pertains to sex.’ That literally is their response.”

That impression was shared by Justin Danhof of the Free Enterprise Project, who asked Cornell if he regretted implementing the policy. Instead of answering, the executive reiterated that he wanted Target to be “a place that is welcoming, comfortable, and safe” — something their policy makes an impossibility for the majority of shoppers put at risk. Regardless, Danhof got the impression, “If you are one of the millions of Americans who think that this policy is offensive, Target doesn’t want you as a custumer, they don’t want you as an investor, they don’t want anything to do with you. That’s how I felt leaving this meeting, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that leaving a shareholder meeting.”

Fortunately for families, AFA isn’t easily deterred. According to Tim Wildmon, the group’s efforts are only “ramping up.” With Father’s Day, back-to-school drives, and other events around the corner, Americans will be glad to know that AFA plans to “increase and expand our boycott effort.” “… Target has put us in an unenviable position by saying, ‘We don’t care what you think’ — so we’re going to have to make them care what we think.” So far so good with profits. If “inclusivity” is truly a “core belief” at Target, then it’s time Cornell proved it by considering the concerns of a majority of shoppers.

Originally published here.

Pentagon Fishes for Rainbow Clout

It probably feels like every day is “gay pride day” in the Obama military, but [Wednesday], it came with cake. In the big courtyard inside the Pentagon’s five rings, the Obama administration continued the five-year rainbow parade it started with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” As part of June’s LGBT month, Secretary Ray Mabus tried to persuade people what the research doesn’t: that sexualizing the military is the greatest thing to happen to America’s force.

In direct defiance to the quantifiable data on suicide, retention, recruitment, morale, job dissatisfaction, and sexual assault, Mabus argued that the anyone who opposed open homosexuality in the ranks (which most military leaders did) is “exactly the same flawed logic as those who had earlier opposed racial integration or gender integration, claiming that policies of inclusion would erode the war fighting capabilities of the United States. That’s a suggestion that is not only an insult to the professionalism of our armed forces, but it undermines our core values as service men and women and as Americans.”

Like the commander-in-chief, Mabus brushed by the internal crises and tried to paint a rosy picture of a military on the brink. Just as planes and carriers are falling apart, so too is the unity that was once the hallmark of U.S. Forces. But instead of addressing those concerns, the president’s political appointee spent most of [Wednesday’s] event glossing over the major fallouts of the White House’s social engineering. “When we faced racial integration, when we integrated women into the service, when we repealed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ every time those changes were proposed — every time! — there were naysayers saying the force would be weakened and unit morale would be decreased. And yet the Navy, the Marines, the Army, the Air Force, the Coast Guard are the most powerful forces in the world today…” The president tried the same spin last week at the Air Force Academy. Unfortunately for both of them, ignoring the facts doesn’t make them go away.

And while the administration likes to say, as Mabus implied Wednesday, that “discriminate” has no place in America’s armed forces. Tell that to Christians, who are being shown the door the Pentagon opened to LGBT activists. Marginalizing faith has serious long-term consequences, as we learned 50 years ago in the public schools. Now the same thing is happening in the military, and what’s the result? We’re celebrating gay pride at the expense of American pride. And five years into this radical experiment, very few of our brave men and women would say that it’s been a positive one. Certainly not the 6,083 victims of sexual assault in 2015 — many of whom were men. “Declaring such behavior ‘normal’ may work for the political cowards in Washington and Hollywood,” Lt. Colonel (Ret) Bob Maginnis told the Washington Times, “but fails the straight-face test in Middle America.”

Originally published here.

House Leader Makes a House Call to FRC!

Congressman Diane Black spoke at the Family Research Council [yesterday] about her work as an active member of the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, taking a deeper look at the grisly practices of big abortion providers that were first exposed by the Center for Medical Progress’s shocking undercover videos involving Planned Parenthood, StemExpress, and others.

Black stressed the importance of the work of the panel, saying “nothing could be possibly be more important than how we treat an innocent human life,” insisting we must “hold responsible parties accountable and deliver answers to the American people.” She also pledged to “fight back against every politically motivated maneuver to shut it [the panel] down.”

As a registered nurse, Black spoke passionately about the Planned Parenthood videos and the panel’s newly uncovered evidence that StemExpress and the big abortion providers likely violated patient privacy by illegally sharing confidential patient information with third-party baby part resellers like Stem Express. Black said the Panel is also calling on HHS to investigate StemExpress for using invalid and misleading consent forms against HHS regulations.

Black emphasized that Planned Parenthood, StemExpress, and others acted “highly against the law” in profiting from the trafficking and selling of aborted baby parts. Newly uncovered documents show that StemExpress marked up the price for aborted baby body parts between 400 to 600% when selling samples to researchers. She noted that federal law already prohibits profiting from the sale of baby body parts, and that abortion providers like Planned Parenthood “may have violated this law by the payments they collected.” One of the options at Congress’s disposal is holding StemExpress’s CEO Cate Dyer in contempt of Congress if she continues to refuse to turn over subpoenaed financial documentation regarding the sale of baby body parts. As a result of the panel’s findings, Black explained, “laws do need to be updated; laws need to be clarified; and some laws need to be changed.”

Black also spoke about how the select panel is also investigating notorious late-term abortionist from Maryland, LeRoy Carhart, whom she called “Gosnell by another name.” Carhart, who is notorious for performing unsafe third trimester abortions, has sent at least five women to the hospital recently from botched abortion injuries and killed a woman in a botched abortion in 2013. Carhart’s deposition hearing in front of the select panel is scheduled for Monday. To watch the lecture, click below.

Originally published here.