If you’re a corporate marketing officer concerned over what’s happening with Target, let me make something abundantly clear: You will never appease anti-LGBTQ extremists. But moreover, there’s a colder truth at play here: They don’t want to be appeased, they want to be angry.
Corporations need to understand something about these people: their objective is not really to gain any ground but to find an outlet for their rage at the world changing around them. They are starving for outrage and will feast on any scrap. They would rather be perpetually angry than be mollified. They are furious that anyone would ask them to learn about others. And deep down, they know LGBTQ people are never going away. The closet has been permanently opened.
These people long for an America that always catered to those who look and act like them—that is: white, heterosexual, traditional families. They use religion as a shield for their bigotry. They don’t really care about what Christ taught; he’s just a convenient vehicle.
But that America is long gone, and it’s never coming back. We are witnessing the very long and painful last gasp of that world. And boy, are they furious. Enraged. They’ve had to keep quiet about it for so long, but in the past several years, the quiet part became very loud.
They are angry, and beneath that, they are very, very scared. They will claim they’re not scared. But they’re terrified. None of this works without fear. Fear of what? Uncertainty over their place in a changing society that increasingly doesn’t defer to them.
