By Paul Bremmer
The politically correct campaign to blur the genders – illustrated most recently by Target’s announcement it won’t use blue or pink wallpaper in toy sections or gender-exclusive labeling – is silly, several authors who have addressed the subject have concluded.
Target, explaining it wanted to save shoppers from feeling “frustrated or limited by the way things are presented” in their stores, said it will start ridding its shelves of gender-based labels in toy, bedding and entertainment departments.
Pastor Carl Gallups, a bestselling author, speaker and radio host, said it won’t work.
“Boys are boys, and girls are girls,” said Gallups, author of “Be Thou Prepared.”
“For those who are uncertain of ‘what they are,’ check your birth certificate or get a DNA test. This is not rocket science. Neither political correctness nor the radical gay agenda ripping through corporate America can change the facts of nature and science.”
Target said its decision came after an Ohio mother and feminist blogger tweeted a photo in June of gender-based signage at a Target in Green, Ohio. The sign indicated that aisle E11 contained “building sets” and “girls’ building sets.”
Her tweet caused enough customer complaints that Target decided to make the changes.
In addition to removing gender-based signs, the retail chain also claimed it will remove pink, blue, yellow and green paper on the back walls of shelves in the toy aisles so as not to suggest some toys are for girls and others are for boys.
Utter silliness, in Gallups’ view.
“No one is prohibiting any child from shopping and purchasing any product from anywhere in the store,” the pastor exclaimed. “There certainly is no extra stress or burden upon a child or parents to see pink or blue banners indicating gender-based products. This is nothing more than a signal to the radical marriage and family re-definers of our day. Target wants to appear ‘politically correct.'”
Paul Kengor, a professor and author of “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” said Target is fighting a losing battle against human nature.
“Target can do whatever it wants, but human nature is human nature,” Kengor told WND. “Boys will generally want toys for boys, and girls will want girl stuff. Meanwhile, Target can pride itself in its phony progressive-mindedness while its customers act according to their nature. They can carry whatever flag for whatever crusade, but men are men and women are women, in spite of Target’s creative worldview.”
Longtime conservative activist and WND columnist Phyllis Schlafly, who has spent much of her career fighting against feminism, believes Target is unwise to ignore gender differences.
“We all know that we’re two different kinds, and calling them the same thing is not going to change that fact,” said Schlafly, author of “Who Killed the American Family?” “And so I think the stores are making a mistake. They still need to put trucks in one section and dolls in another section if they want to sell their goods.”
Michael Brown, nationally syndicated radio host and author of the forthcoming book “Outlasting the Gay Revolution,” believes Target is taking part in a social experiment that is doomed to failure.
“The reality, of course, is that male-female distinctives go to the very core of human nature – indeed, they are what makes the world go ’round – and to create an environment that denies, or dramatically downplays, their existence is to engage in a social experiment that is sure to fail,” Brown asserted.
“The bad news is that we could have a rough ride in the next few years. The good news is that God did, indeed, make us male and female – as the overwhelming, prevailing norm – and those who celebrate those distinctives and build relationships and families based on those distinctives will flourish.”
Bloomberg reported last week a demand for androgynous clothing, a blurring of the sexes.
It cited a men’s fashion show that featured feminine items of clothing, such as “massive pussycat bow blouses, shrunken jackets, and low-slung, wide-leg trousers.”
Schlafly scoffed.
“It’s probably a declaration that God made a mistake in making us two different kinds, and they’re trying to remedy his mistake, and I don’t think they’re going to get anywhere with that,” she said. “I’m not going out with any man who dresses up in women’s clothes!”
Brown, a WND columnist, similarly believes differences between the genders need to be recognized.
“We cannot surrender the importance of gender distinctions or, worse still, join in the ever-intensifying war on gender without grave social consequences,” he said.
Brown pointed to a passage from his book, “Outlasting the Gay Revolution,” where he writes:
[R]egardless of the culture, nationality, ethnicity, or skin color, every society has men and women, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, boys and girls. This is another reason why the gay revolution stands on very tenuous ground: It is rendering gender meaningless.
Gallups, as he often does, related the gender-bending issues back to the Bible.
“We can dress these matters up in any politically correct way we choose, but it still comes back to an atmosphere of ‘perversion’ and being ‘given over to a depraved mind’ (Romans 1: 18-32) for those of us who come from a biblical worldview,” Gallups said.
The pastor believes America is now seeing what happens when two worlds collide.
“America’s Christian heritage is being undermined and dismantled by a Last Days spirit of abject secularism and a sweeping Sodom and Gomorrah spirit – that we are now trying to ‘export’ to the rest of the world,” Gallups warned. “Interestingly, Jesus said (in Luke 17) that the Last Days era would be characterized specifically by this spirit. If there ever were an age of urgency for people to be right with our Creator through a born-again relationship with Jesus Christ, it is now.”
