The Pride Month that wasn’t

If you thought this June was a more subdued Pride Month than usual, you weren’t just imagining it. According to multiple analysts and advocates, the typical flurry of rainbow-themed marketing was consistently either toned down or not present at all. Target continued offering some merch, but after last year’s backlash, the displays were noticeably scaled down. Chief Growth Officer Christian Hennington explained that the boycott was “a signal for us to pause, adapt and learn.”

Hennington wasn’t the only one rushing to find a silver lining in the rain clouds. Some suggested everyone was just playing it safe in an election year. Others suggested that perhaps Big Corporate is collectively moving away from the commercialization of gay rights toward a new era marked by “more enduring acts of allyship.”

Or, perhaps, we are approaching a cultural tipping point.

Some activists sensed this and made their loud complaints accordingly. MoveOn campaign director Jensine Gomez thundered that it was “time for Target to stop caving to right-wing radicals and honor its commitments to the LGBTQ+ community.” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson declared to NPR that “LGBTQ+ people are in every ZIP code in this country, and we aren’t going anywhere.” She accused the store of not only risking their profits with the LGBTQ+ demographic but also compromising their values because “Pride merchandise means something.”

She’s not wrong. Pride merchandise does mean something. One data analyst amusingly said that Target had been “dragged into the culture wars,” as if the chain’s decade of Pride displays hadn’t been an elaborately planned act of culture warring.

People who sneer at conservative Christians for making mountains out of cultural molehills should listen to these activists. Clearly, Pride displays aren’t just a molehill for the radical left. They have functioned as signposts, as garish victory flags firmly planted on conquered turf.

But as even staunch old-school LGB activists have been warning, normal people are increasingly disturbed by the land grabs being made on behalf of “T.” Last year’s Target boycotts provided a revealing case study. Clothing marketed to “trans” customers wasn’t new for the chain—it had already introduced chest binders in 2022—but people sat up and took notice when the marketing included kids. Although the store strenuously denied that it sold “tuck-friendly” bathing suits for little boys with gender dysphoria, video evidence from The Heritage Foundation showed otherwise. Video from Gays Against Groomers also showed what appeared to be a youth T-shirt design featuring cartoonish female nudes, including one with the appearance of a “trans man.”

2023 was also the year of backlash for brands partnering with trans “influencers,” most infamously Nike and Bud Light with Dylan Mulvaney. Target paid for its own ill-fated partnership with U.K. “trans” designer “Erik” Carnell, after some of her more lurid designs came to light, including a demon-head pin with the slogan “Satan respects pronouns” and a mini-guillotine captioned “Homophobe headrest.” Target only carried her more banal designs, but her disturbing Instagram feed was just a click away. Across all these brand fiascos, the feedback from ordinary American customers was consistent: However vaguely tolerant they might have felt toward gender-dysphoric people, they were creeped out by aggressive fetishists.

It may be impolite for conservatives to say, “We told you so,” but, well, we told you so. As far-left writer Freddie deBoer once admitted, social conservatives from his perspective may be wrong on everything, but they’re rarely wrong about what’s going to happen next. “Tuck-friendly” kids swimsuits didn’t spring out of thin air, any more than elementary school LGBTQ+ sex ed. As I wrote last year, these things are merely the current most extreme step in a decadeslong progression of culture capture—a process started by LGBs, even if some of them now want to disinvite the Ts.

Sadly, if the activist claim that “the LGBTQ community makes up 30 percent of Generation Z” is even close to true, then we must soberly admit the plan has worked all too well. And while some parents are fed up, there are still moms like self-described “ally” Meredith Brownand, who was disappointed that she couldn’t buy matching Pride shirts for herself and her daughter this year.

But based on Target’s profit losses, it’s clear that their choices didn’t just outrage a tiny band of “right-wing activists.” They must have irritated average shoppers, too, some of whom might otherwise have been ignoring or vaguely tolerating the displays. The Babylon Bee captured this with a skit where Target’s mascot dog stalks a little girl all over the store, plying her with transgender propaganda when she’s just trying to look at cute shoes and Barbies.

Maybe, after 10 years, people are growing tired. Tired of the rainbow-colored sensory overload. Tired of the slogans thrust on them and printed across baby clothes like sacred mantras. Tired of the sense that they’re being relentlessly, insistently proselytized by a religion they don’t want to join.

This war is far from over. Indeed, it’s only barely begun. But if the activist left continues overplaying its hand, perhaps sanity has a fighting chance.