A major American retailer has seen its market value plummet because of its high profile promotion of LGBT products.
The US Target chain which has no link through ownership or operation to the Australian brand of the same name, lost A$15 billion or 14% of its value in just 10 days, to reach a three-year low.
It has gone into damage control, removing its pride merchandise from the front to the back of many of its nearly 2,000 stores.
That included swimsuits, kids clothing and other items with pride themes.
Their heavy promotion prompted conservative commentators to call for a boycott of the company.
The retail giant claimed it has back-tracked because of safety concerns for its employees, but insiders say they were given 36-hours to make the contentious merchandise much less visible.
Fox News reports it is desperately trying to avoid the fate of a brewery whose sales plunged by nearly a third, after a transgender influencer promoted a brand of beer, prompting a consumer boycott.
Former LGBT fashion designer turned devout Christian Becket Cook calls the widespread approval of the pride culture as part of an overall activist strategy. “Gay pride used to be one day a year and then it became a month and now basically it’s all year round,” he told CBN News.
He says it’s been flooded with pro-transgender messaging in recent years, especially as it relates to children:
“There’s a very strong anti-Christian sentiment in the pride culture. One way to kind of get at Christians is to subvert God’s original design for male and female. It’s almost like this revenge. It’s not so much as ‘we hate Christians.’ It’s more ‘we hate God, so we’re going to be as subversive as we possibly can.’”
Mr. Cook said: “I think every day during pride month (June in US) we should all as Christians be praying for people to get saved out of that life just like God did with me.”
Another LGBT convert to Christianity, evangelist Nichol Collins, told CBN News: “We shouldn’t be shocked, alarmed or intimidated by this movement. We can’t become desensitised and begin to normalise its lifestyle. We’ve gotta stick to our convictions. We’ve gotta be bold in this hour and arise as intercessors to pray against this movement because the weapons of our warfare, they’re not carnal but mighty through God to pulling down strongholds. So, we can’t allow the world to dictate to the church what sin is.”
