‘BudLighted’: Target is latest to face boycott calls over support for the LGBTQ+ community

Pride Month hasn’t officially begun but corporate brands from Bud Light to Target are already taking fire over marketing and merchandise celebrating the LGBTQ community.

Called “BudLighting,” the strategy is to crush so-called rainbow capitalism by branding companies as “woke” and calling for boycotts over everything from Adidas’ gender-inclusive swimwear to a North Face marketing campaign featuring drag queen and environmentalist Pattie Gonia.

After critics posted videos of attacking LGBTQ Pride displays and confronting employees in Target stores, the company held an emergency meeting and decided to remove or relocate some Pride merchandise so it’s less visible in stores.

“The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands,” one conservative activist tweeted. “Our campaign is making progress. Let’s keep it going.”

Target’s website carries hundreds of Pride products, including T-shirts, books and furnishings. Pride Month begins in June.

At issue was misinformation spread about “tuck friendly” swimsuits that allow trans women who have not had gender-affirming operations to conceal male genitals. Some social media accounts falsely claimed the swimsuits were being sold in children’s sizes.

Even in the face of threats against store staffers, Target’s capitulation after a decade of supporting and making profits from the LGBTQ community during Pride Month could damage the brand, according to consumer psychologist Ross Steinman.

Last week Target CEO Brian Cornell credited his company’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for “much of our growth over the last nine years.”

“When you walk into a store and you feel at home, and it represents the community, it makes a huge difference,” Cornell told Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast.

“We will see more of the same if a brand like Target does not put its hands up and say: Enough,” Steinman said. “They are a major player and other brands look to them for their response.”

Hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ people – particularly transgender people – have been introduced by Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the country, seeking to regulate what bathrooms they can use, what medical care they can receive and what sports teams they can play on.

Now the culture wars are being fought in store aisles.

On Twitter, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, criticized Target’s CEO, accusing him of “selling out the LGBTQ+ community to extremists.”

LGBTQ groups condemned Target for bowing to pressure. Nearly half of adults around the globe − 47% − support companies and brands that promote equality for LGBTQ+ people, according to Ipsos. Seven in 10 U.S. LGBTQ+ adults are more likely to patronize a business that “outreaches and advertises to the LGTBQ+ community,” Community Marketing Insights found.

LGBTQ groups condemned corporations for bowing to pressure.

Last week, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, took action against Anheuser-Busch over its handling of the conservative backlash to Mulvaney, accusing the multinational beer company of caving to political pressure.

In a May 9 letter shared exclusively with USA TODAY, the Human Rights Campaign informed the Bud Light maker that it has suspended its Corporate Equality Index score – a tool that scores companies on their policies for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees.

“Anti-LGBTQ violence and hate should not be winning in America, but it will continue to until corporate leaders step up as heroes for their LGBTQ employees and consumers and do not cave to fringe activists calling for censorship,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said in a statement Tuesday.

Credit: usatoday.com