Target Bathroom Policy: Conservative Group Sending Men Into Women’s Bathroom To ‘Test’ Retailer

Just when you thought the furor over the new Target bathroom policy was dying down, a conservative group is bringing the issue back into the spotlight. Target made national news in April when it announced a new bathroom policy that would allow transgender employees and customers to use the bathroom they were most comfortable with using. Conservative groups and individuals alike quickly made their anger against the decision known, #BoycottTarget was born, and over a million people have signed a pledge to boycott the nation’s second largest retailer as a result of Target’s commitment to preserving LGBT rights.

Towards the end of April, one customer decided to test the new Target bathroom policy for himself and record his experience. Armed with a recording device, Andy Park visited a Florida Target store and asked a security employee if he could use the women’s restroom because he “felt more comfortable” there. The employee told him he could, and the video Park recorded quickly went viral, enraging conservative activists and further fanning the flames of the public outcry against Target’s new bathroom policy.

#BoycottTarget The American Family Association has received over 350,000 pledges to boycott @Target in a week. pic.twitter.com/l2byor9OxV

— Terri Green (@TerriGreenUSA) April 24, 2016

Now an entire conservative group, the American Family Association, has announced that it’s taking its protest against Target’s bathroom policy to the bathrooms themselves. According to a TIME report, Sandy Rios, leader of the conservative group, announced Monday that the group had been sending men into women’s bathrooms at Target solely to test the store’s new bathroom policy.

“We’ve already had people testing this, going into Targets, and men going in to bathrooms, there is absolutely no barrier. The chief concern for the American Family Association is predators who will take advantage.”

During an interview with Breitbart News Daily, Rios, the director of government affairs for the American Family Association, said that the group is concerned that allowing “men dressed like women” to use Target’s women’s bathrooms could create “trauma for little girls.”

Seeing no epidemic of men entering women's restrooms at Target, American Family Association decides to create one https://t.co/fmXJoN3qfJ

— Fark (@fark) May 3, 2016

She didn’t comment on the potential trauma being caused to little girls by the conservative group actively sending men dressed as men into Target’s women’s bathrooms, but did speak of her fear that biological males in women’s restrooms could be dangerous.

“I think the potential for sexual predators is just enormous.”

Despite the increasingly brazen and intrusive Target protests and “tests” by the conservative group, LGBT activists have long cited that cities that have implemented “trans-inclusive bathroom policies” have seen no increase in reports of sexual predators or sexual crimes in their public bathrooms. Even the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women has publicly come out against the idea of anti-transgender bathroom policies, saying that the claim that Target’s new bathroom policy and others like it increase the likelihood of sex crimes taking place is “false.”

Conservative group leader Rios had no kind words for the defense of transgender rights during her interview. Rather, she called Target’s bathroom policy and others like it the “mindless, ridiculous, madness of the radical left.” She ended her tirade against inclusiveness for transgender individuals by calling on more people to sign the #BoycottTarget petition.

While the American Family Association clearly has a problem with transgender individuals using the women’s bathroom in Target stores, as Gawker reports, the conservative group doesn’t seem to believe that sending non-transgender, conservative men into Target’s women’s bathrooms is a potential threat.

Indeed, Gawker seems to be much more concerned with the legions of un-vetted, unknown men that the conservative group has admitted to sending into women’s bathrooms than the occasional trans individual who might enter a woman’s bathroom to use it for its intended purpose.

“We simply can’t rule out the possibility that these male plants from the American Family Association will not touch underage children and whisper weird words into their ears while going potty.”

Gawker reportedly asked the conservative group if they could verify that the men they sent into the Target bathrooms weren’t “perverts and/or molesters who might molest and/or pervert young girls who are using the bathroom,” and promised to update the article when they got an answer from the American Family Association. As of yet, no update has been added, but the article does advise “extreme caution” in all Target women’s bathroom nationwide, as the conservative group has bragged about sending multiple men to “test” Target.

What do you think? Is the new Target bathroom policy dangerous? Or, does a conservative group sending multiple grown men into women’s bathrooms at Target to protest/test the policy pose a bigger threat to our children?

[Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images]