Customer complaints cause Target to remove LGBTQ-themed products

Target, which launched its Pride Collection in May, is removing some products from its stores due to negative customer feedback.

As part of its Pride Collection, Target Corp. is selling more than 2,000 items, including clothing, books, music, and home furnishings. The products include "gender fluid" mugs, "queer all year" calendars, and "Bye Bye, Binary," "Pride 1, 2, 3," and "I'm not a girl" books for kids ages 2 to 8.

In a statement, Target said that since introducing the 2023 collection, it has encountered threats that have affected its team members' sense of safety and wellbeing at work.

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more than ten years, Target has honored Pride Month. However, this year's collection has increased customer and employee altercations and instances of Pride merchandise being thrown to the ground, according to Target spokesperson Kayla Castaneda.

Target's move follows a backlash from conservatives against Bud Light after brewer Anheuser-Busch partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the beer on social media last month.

According to Castaneda, Target is taking the withdrawn items off the shelves of all of its U.S. stores and from its website.

While several Pride Collection products are being examined, the only ones that have been taken off the market so far are those made by the LGBTQ-friendly company Abprallen, which has drawn criticism for its affiliation with British designer Eric Carnell.

Carnell has come under fire on social media for creating merchandise featuring pentagrams, horned skulls, and other Satanic symbols.

An $18 'too queer for here' tote bag and a $25 slogan jumper with the words 'cure transphobia, not trans people' were previously available at Target, according to screenshots and social media posts.

According to Castaneda, Target is also looking into some transgender swimsuits and children's products, but no decisions have been made yet.