by Ben Johnson
MINNIAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, May 23, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two years after funding a pro-marriage politician, the Target Corporation has decided to fund an organization dedicated to same-sex “marriage.”
Target has announced it will make a donation worth up to $120,000 to the Family Equality Council (FEC), a homosexual political advocacy group.
LGBT groups put Target in a bulls-eye after it donated money to a pro-marriage candidate in 2010.
In the month of June, the chain will donate the proceeds from online sales of a special collection of shirts, including one designed by singer Gwen Stefani, to the organization.
The Minneapolis-based retailer faced backlash in 2010 after it gave $150,000 to MN Forward, a political group that supported Tom Emmer, the pro-life, pro-marriage Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota. He narrowly lost to pro-abortion Democrat Mark Dayton.
At the time, the corporation resisted calls to make an equal contribution to a homosexual advocacy organization. Although Target had a long and positive relationship with Minneapolis Pride Parade, and the LGBT pressure group OutFront Minnesota admitted the store has been “a strong ally of Minnesota’s GLBT community,” the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and other homosexual political organizations demanded contributions and inspired a boycott. Target generated nearly $70 billion in annual revenues in 2011.
A Target spokesman denied the donations were linked.
FEC opposes a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, which is up for a statewide referendum this November.
Chuck Darrell, communications director for Minnesota for Marriage, told LifeSiteNews.com, “Perhaps it would make a lot more sense for Target to help raise money for traditional marriage, as a new study on social trends shows huge sectors of our economic benefit from traditional marriage with children. That includes corporations like Target.”
A study released last year by the Social Trends Institute found a family that is married with children spends more than three times more on households products and services than single people and significantly more than childless married couples. “Companies as varied as Home Depot…and Target…are probably more likely to profit when men and women marry and have children,” its authors, W. Bradford Wilcox and Carlos Cavallé, concluded.
“Government and corporations had a vested interest in encouraging traditional marriage and procreation, because everybody benefits from it,” Darrell told LifeSiteNews.
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis has strongly supported the measure.
Target’s beneficiary, the Family Equality Council, was founded in 1979 as the Gay Parents Coalition. In 1998, after a series of name changes, the group changed its name to Family Pride Coalition “in order to include bisexual and transgender parents.” It settled on Family Equality Coalition in 2007.
FEC has one prominent ally in its fight against the marriage amendment: President Barack Obama. In April, an Obama campaign spokesperson said the president felt the Minnesota amendment “would single out and discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couples.” Since that time President Obama has endorsed same-sex “marriage,” citing the Golden Rule and conversations with his daughters as his motivation.
Darrell told LifeSiteNews the president’s involvement in a state issue backfired.
“President Obama’s betrayal of traditional marriage caused a lot of new interest in the campaign, especially when people come to understand that politicians are trying to meddle with the definition of marriage,” he said.
Contact:
E-mail may be sent to Target Chairman Gregg Steinhafel via this link, or call Target headquarters at (612) 304-6073, and choose option 6.
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