Franklin Graham Tells Target to Respect ‘Genders That God Created’ After Store

Australia-based organization Play Unlimited launched its “No Gender December” campaign in 2013, an effort to remove gendered toys from Christmas.

Backtracking on the events that have transpired over the past year, it is understandable that Target goes gender-neutral because of a substantial number of customers have raised significant questions about some of their signage and displays that exude an air of “product suggestions” based plainly on gender. This brings back Target’s earlier argument to mind: that keeping gender-specific categories for some sections makes shopping easier.

“One of the top ways that people search dot-com when they’re searching for toys for a child is to sort by gender”, Snyder said.

But we never want guests or their families to feel frustrated or limited by the way things are presented.

Evangelist Franklin Graham is calling for his followers to boycott the superstore.

Still, there has been a growing online movement to stop splitting the toy aisles by gender, as The Washington Post notes.

What I want to suggest is that maybe, in spite of shrewd marketers selling gender-specific toys, our kids are getting messages about who they are from beyond the toy aisle.

Later on, I saw the Target story pop up on my Facebook feed, and folks were hotly debating the store’s decision. “There’s going to be some unhappy boys and unhappy girls now”. “What’s next? Are they going to try to make people believe that pink or blue baby showers are politically incorrect?” the evangelical leader asked on Facebook.

I have news for them and for everyone else-God created two different genders. Jesus said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female (Matthew 19:4).

I agree, if any deli menu item were going to run for president, you’d think, “Italian hoagie I’d vote for”.

“You don’t have to shop at Target”. And if your child prefers to play with the opposite gender’s toy, then by all means it is up to the parent to make that decision to allow their child to pick what they want to play with.

Some of the comments on Graham’s post have to be seen to be believed.

And here’s the other thing: kids don’t need them either.

What appears to have happened here is a ideal example of missing the point. Other than that, boys and girls all played with bikes and Matchbox cars, stuffed animals and Lincoln Logs, board games and playground balls. I don’t remember many “girl toys” in stores when I was growing up in the 1970s. It’s an interesting culture war to watch: In the future, gender stereotyping could indeed be rolled back even further, into areas such as the clothing department. If every store also offered an aisle stocked exclusively with “neutral” apparel, like single color, frill-free t-shirts for all children, this could only serve to boost sales, customer choice and satisfaction.

Of course we can all rely on Fox News to be a little confused about liberal change, and voice their opinions accordingly. (According to Jo Paoletti, author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America, the association of boys with blue and girls with pink dates to the 1940s.) In 2011, Vanessa LoBue and Judy DeLoache undertook a study of a group of boys and girls between the ages of seven months and five years.