Are One Million People Really Boycotting Target Over Its Trans-Inclusive Policy?

Petition Has Over One Million Signatures – Progressive News Site Disputes Anti-LGBT Hate Group’s Claim

The American Family Association on April 20 launched a petition asking people to boycott Target in response to the discount retail giant’s announcement it will allow transgender customers and employees to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Eight days later one million people had signed the petition. Today, 1.2 million have signed it. Or have they? 

ThinkProgress‘ Zack Ford is doubtful.

“In reality,” Ford writes, the one million “number is unverifiable and almost certainly inaccurate. All that’s actually happening is that a hate group is getting a lot of free press.”

Noting that the American Family Association appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of certified active anti-gay hate groups, Ford points to “what AFA doesn’t list on its site: who signed the pledge. It’s completely anonymous. There is no way of tracking the validity of the number of signers.”

That’s fair. After all, the American Family Association’s petition is not managed by an independent third party, like Change.org or other petition sites. Ford writes, “the number does not represent an actual population of people. Such campaigns are frequently used by various advocacy organizations to build their email lists for future outreach efforts.”

That’s not only extremely true and accurate, it’s the business plan of the American Family Association’s more public division: One Million Moms. As NCRM has often reported, OMM exists as the low-budget email address collection arm of the American Family Association. They find an issue that they know their 85,000 Facebook followers will respond to and share on social media, then get people to sign a letter, and to do that they have to hand over their email address, which the AFA then adds to it huge database and uses to fundraise. It’s a great business model if you know what you’re doing, and the AFA certainly does.

“In fact,” Ford continues about the AFA’s Target petition, “ThinkProgress successfully ‘signed’ it three different times from the same web browser using the names ‘I disagree With this,’ ‘I really think this is stupid,’ and ‘This isn’t A real email.’ All that it required was using a different email address each time. As the last name suggests, it was also possible to sign the pledge using a gmail.com address that does not even exist. Thus, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from doing the same to inflate the numbers, or even for AFA to do so to generate further buzz.”

Many of these people who are pledging to boycott Target are likely the same ones who pledged to boycott Apple over its support of LGBT rights. And a good number of them are doing so from their iPhones and MacBooks. They’re the same people who use Facebook and Twitter every day – two companies that support full LGBT equality. They drive in cars made by major corporations that also support fill LGBT equality, purchase a myriad of products made by corporations that support full LGBT equality, but for a few moments they’ll feel great about their promise to boycott Target, which will do nothing at all to the 113-year old $74 billion retailer.

Are some people angry at Target for supporting transgender people? Sure. Have 1.2 million different people signed the pledge to boycott Target? Doubtful. Will everyone who did sign the pledge stick to it? Extremely doubtful. Does the petition do anything other than enrich the American Family Association’s coffers? Nope.

 

Image by The New Civil Rights Movement