I'll be first to say it:

Fuck you, Target.

Target missed the bullseye.

Bravo Dan! While you're at it, lets take down president Obama's video as well.

Gah. I tried to watch it, just out of curiosity. I forced myself to sit through 2 minutes before I couldn't stand it any more. Not only is Target clueless. Their IGB video is lame and boring. The video is as soulless as the company that produced it.

Does any part of it involve Choxie?

OMG, good call @7.

TBH, I still don't think Target is anti-gay so much as pro-money. Target was caught giving to the biggest corporation cheerleaders of all: the Republicans (which is no small feat, considering the Democrats). Unfortunately, these Republicans in their home office state are also uber-religious right-wing nutcases. Which means that Target donates to anti-gay candidates. Its not that hard to fathom, really. Its just unfortunate. And, the gays aren't nearly so powerful that even our boycotting of Target can defer the amount of money they'll make from tax loopholes from the right politicians.

Sad but true.

Oh, and I fully support not putting Target's IGB video on the official website and such. They shouldn't be so pro-money, that they eschew all other responsibilities; but, I think that of most corporations.

I don't know....IGB videos are supposed to be for young people, to inspire them, and show thm that life does, indeed get better, right?

Most young people - at least in my day, which was decades ago - don't know that much, or care that much, about GLBT politics. But most of them do know stores, and brands.

If they see that a store that they go to has gay people, happy productive gay people, in their employ, what's the harm?

and - just out of curiosity - is there a IGB video from Wal-Mart?

The message still transcends any motive that tries to ride piggyback on it, and the message will continue to do so. It beams through any glossy overlay of unnecessarily high production values.

I think Dan has just the right touch on this issue, and I hope Target makes major course corrections. This is a step in the right direction, though it would be better had they fixed the actual problems before trying to join the party.

Oh yeah, politics don't matter because young people aren't political and money isn't political and only an expert can deal with a problem.

And it isn't just gay people who are and will boycott Target. Jeez misanthrope, you are not alone.

Fuck Target, right in the ear.

Nah, I think Dan's response is right on the money. For what that's worth (my opinion, that is).

@12 showing up at the equality rally in a pointy white hat doesn't do it for me.

I just opened a YouTube account (ick -ack-pthew) just to contribute to the conversation and vote the really (and I am not kidding) obvious comments from Target's middle management down . . . also ours up :P

@15, I'm still boycotting Target, so it's not like I'm suddenly man-on-dog with ol' Bullseye. XD

No shortage of criminal politicians IGB video's though.

Cheers rob!

Call it semantics if you will but that's not what "open-source" means at all. How about "creative commons"?

Unless their IGB video apologizes for the harm they've caused the LGBT community (or at the very least acknowledges it) it's a heartless corporation that wants to maximize profits at the expense of civil liberties, they believe the government should have the power to tell people how to behave. Nothing anyone inside the company can do, no matter how great their intentions, it's been designed this way and the people at the top are extremely happy with the results. The board of Target has decided that money is more important that respect, everything out of their mouth is complete bullshit. I imagine it's like the KKK making a video about how much they love and accept black people. Only, the KKK wouldn't do that because they have giant balls. Target is a piece of shit that doesn't deserve the amount of respect we give to the KKK. BURN.

nice bully pulpit move.

Some of you are so consumed in your hate that you have forgotten the reason "It Gets Better" was started. In their own words, "The It Gets Better Project was created to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach -- if they can just get through their teen years. The It Gets Better Project wants to remind teenagers in the LGBT community that they are not alone — and it WILL get better." I am an ally. I watched the video. They accomplished the mission of this project. Secondly, it was created by the LGBTA Business Council. It wasn't a cooperative scheme to win customers. The naysayers disappoint me. I have to say that these comments reflect to me that you really don't care if a video is produced to help young people. You just want to kick the can one more time.

@11 - When a corporation jumps on this bandwagon, they're looking for cheap or free advertising. "Hey, gays, you're awesome! Sincerely, Target" just lacks the effect of the president recording a video or some unknown thirty-something from Duluth, and there's no reason Dan should give them that platform just because they said "me too".

So Dan, perhaps you need to do more research and get the facts straight. I use to work at Target Corp, I don't currently. But I know this:

Target made ONE donation to a Political Action Committee that focused on pro-business initiatives. One candidate that committee supported had a bad social policy that didn't favor GLBT communities. Target took a lot of heat for that donation and they made changes to how decisions like this are made in the future. (Our job as people who want change, is to get people, to change - Mission Accomplished)

What you're also missing is the MILLIONS Target has given and continues to give to GLBT groups, Without Target most Prides Celebration wouldn't even exist.

Yes Target made a mistake, but considering everything, they have learned from that mistake - They have CLEARLY proven they have learned.

You Dan have the ear of many GLBT people in the country and world, you need to be responsible when report things and report the ACTUAL facts.

What @24 said.

Look, I'm a woman, there's been breast cancer in my family, etc. And I despise the pink ribbon campaign. It just becomes a way of cheap feel-good advertising, using up money to produce & consume that would have been better sent directly to research. A lot of promotional stuff goes that way, so it doesn't impress me much that Target jumped on the IGB bandwagon, particularly after so much criticism over their donations. "Pinkwashing" is really the best description.

As someone else said, if they'd prefaced that video with a corporate apology for the donations and a promise to stay away from that type of donation in the future, it would have been far more effective and meaningful.

IGBP's primary strength lies in the individuals who have poured their hearts into their videos and posted them for LGBT youth. The rest is window dressing -- albeit nicely done in many cases -- and is useful in shaping more mainstream opinion. And on that level it's fine that Target did what they did, but I don't think for a moment their video is particularly important to the overall reach of IGB.

@ 25, please read the article Dan linked from the word "issues", because it wasn't one mistake. Donations to anti-gay politicians have continued.

To people who say that this fulfilled the requirements for the project and should get put up, there are SO MANY videos up already, from good people, from people who have no mixed actions when it comes to supporting GLBTQ people. Why on earth would we endorse someone who fails to endorse us wholeheartedly?

Awww. Poor little Danny boy the Savage doesn't LIKE Target! He won't play with them, because they've been MEAN! In fact, they can go home! They don't get to play with his barbie-dolls anymore! As for his stuffed pony collection, they can't play with that until they say sorry!

Little Danny Boy the Savage, perennial toddler.

BTW, I enjoy watching Savage increasingly buying his own feedback from the simpering morons here about how important his voice is. He's telling printers what they should print, legislators how to vote, people how to think. Funny thing is, he thinks they could give two hoots and holler what an aging pervert thinks. Keep it up, Danny Boy the Savage. Your true colors are really ugly, and they're starting to show.

Of for fuck's sake I didn't know I was supposed to be boycotting target. I just bought a pair of $8 swim trunks there. My bad.

@29: Go on...

@29: Also, this is just another case of "not my problem, so I don't care". If a company had donated substantial amounts of money to an organization that advocated against miscegenation and wanted to ban interracial marriage, wouldn't you agree with boycotting it? If this company then released a video talking about how important it is to value diversity, wouldn't you see this as meaningless and hollow in light of their donations to the opposite cause?
I sometimes wonder if you are incapable of accepting that not everyone has the same worldview as you.

@VL

I would never question Little Danny Boy the Savages right to make a public fool of himself. I don't question his right to endorse patently silly or even offensive causes, like comparing the very real civil rights issues actual minorities have with the special citizen movement for gays of people like him. Boycott Target for imagined insults with all the tiny might he has, if he wants. Make up lies about decent men who tell him a truth he can't handle, if he can't do any better. That's his business, and his right to free speech.

Put another way, I stopped listening to Rush Limbaugh a decade and a half ago. When he first began his career he was genuinely curious about how others thought, capable of respectful conversations with those he disagreed with. I didn't agree with more than about 70% of what he said, but his conversations with listeners or guests were interesting, sometimes even stimulating.

Then he bought his own publicity. He began to see himself as being as important as some of his more unstable fans believed him to be. He started buying into the paranoid rhetoric of the fringe partisans of his ideology. Now he's a pompous hypocritical blowhard who sounds like he's lying even when telling the truth.

And Savage is his opposite on the left. Well, he never actually had anything to say worth hearing to begin with, but the narcissistic little boy that he is has been fully brought out by his brush with fame.

With a thinking intelligent man like Limbaugh this was a bit sad to watch. With a thing like Savage it's downright entertaining.

@33: Just once, I wish you'd respond to what I'm saying rather than going on some long tired spiel about whatever you feel like complaining about at the moment.
THIS IS NOT AN ELECTORAL DEBATE, YOU RAPSCALLION

@34

You're making up a false equivalency wherein the imaginary minority status of gay men or lesbians equates to the very real civil rights issues faced by black people, asians, women and other non-choice driven groups.

When a marriage between two people of different ethnic background but otherwise within the definitions of marriage was forbidden this was a clear injustice.

I've said it before. We provide access to public space for those unable to walk, confined to wheelchairs. We neither do nor should feel such a need for those who choose to ride in the chair but could walk if they wished. Gays choose to ride in the chair. Fine. But this doesn't imply a single obligation from anyone else.

I just didn't see the point in responding to a comparison of apples and oranges on equal terms.

@35 So, no more civil rights protections for religion then? After all Christians/Jews/Muslims/Buddhists/Hindus/Pastafarians are choosing to follow their religion so why should we accommodate them, right?

@35: Are you acting this dense on purpose, or are you seriously leotarded? I'm not trying to tell you to advocate for the same things that Dan Savage advocates for. I'm trying to explain that his statements make sense. I'll break it down into VERY SIMPLE TERMS for you.
If a person or corporation SAYS something, but DOES the exact opposite, wouldn't you agree that the words should be rejected in light of the oppositional and more substantial actions?

Also, there is no evidence to suggest that sexual orientation is chosen. Please stop blathering on that it is; I don't need your jibber-jabber.

@36 I'm ignoring what you said because I get a laugh out of Seattleblueballs. Everyone else is ignoring what you said because you can't be bothered to register and they don't read unregistered comments because worse trolls than Dan's obsessed cyberstalker SB live there.

@38 and if there were evidence it was chosen see my post @37.

Last I checked, freedom of religion is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

Freedom of bath-houses? That must be missing from my copy.

@41 So, in the interest of freedom of religion shouldn't the same sex marriages my religion allows me to perform be recognized equally with the different sex marriages allowed by Christianity? Or is it only freedom of the religions you approve of?

Sorry, did someone pass a law that said your faith couldn't have a fake marriage between 2 guys or 2 gals? No, they didn't because they can't while passing Constitutional muster.

Some non-Christian churches do recognize same sex partnerings as marriage. Some churches erroneously call themselves Christian and do so as well. Some even ordain church leadership who are openly practicing a lifestyle at odds with Christianity, and somehow call themselves Christian, again erroneously. This neither imposes an obligation on other faiths or on the government. Similarly, my church refusing to recognize a gay perversion as a marriage imposes no obligation on faiths that aren't Christian, or on the government.

So what was the problem?

VL

Little Danny Boy the Savage has every right to advocate for whatever asanine things it likes. It's a free country.

It has a right to exclude from its' playhouse people it doesn't like out of petty malice or childish temper tantrums. Not my business.

I actually think that for every child who doesn't committ suicide because of Savages' It gets gayer program, 4 or 5 lives are ruined with an acceptance of a lifestyle choice harmful to the person making the choice. So excluding Target from his playhouse doesn't bug me. Target should ignore Danny Boy like the petulant child/subhuman thing it is, but that's their call.

@44: Explain to me, if you will, exactly how telling gay kids (many of them closeted) to buck up will cause their lives to be ruined.
Go ahead and tell me, you assclown. You should grow like an onion with your head in the ground!

I'm boycotting Target already, because their superstores aren't open 24 hours and their prices fucking suck compared to Walmart or Meijer. Don't support shitty businesses.

@43 The problem is the state recognition of your churches fake marriage between a man and a woman while the state refuses to recognize same sex marriages.

@47

The state refuses to recognize marriage between 2 women and a man, or 2 men and a woman. It refuses to recognize marriage between first cousins, or minors without parental consent. It refuses to recognize marriage between a man or woman and their Rhodesian Ridgeback. It looks with a pretty careful eye on marriage between a US national and a citizen of another country.

It refuses to recognize all kinds of 'marriage.' And...?

Dan, I was a fan. I am gay and work for Target and I cannot believe that you keep ANYONE from participating this cause that you care so much for. You have the inability to see anything positive as good. We GLBT at Target expected more of you. We are fighting internally to make things better and words like yours do not help. Progress is being made. Your stance keeps us from imparting the change we all know will come to be. I participated in the GLBT council that made this. Our intent was not to better PR. It was to help teens. I thought that was your goal. We are not our CEO, but we are still Target and we are working to get better. For FCUKs sake give us a chance.

Seattleblues, do you have any explanation for me, or are you just blowing smoke, sphincter boy?

So many new SLOG registrants from Target on here tonight.

@49 so Target bases their decisions based on whether or not their video gets posted on the IGBP main website? That makes no sense. Can you explain how, exactly, "[Dan's] stance keeps [you] from imparting the change we all know will come to be." (Never mind how completely nonsensical that sentence is on its face.)

Seattleblues is just so obviously gay and hard for Danny --- it's really cute. I just like watching the back and forth.

The best part is how he says

It has a right to exclude from its' playhouse people it doesn't like out of petty malice or childish temper tantrums. Not my business.

(Note the misspelling of 'asinine' in the same post and the wrong apostrophe after 'its.' Seattleblues is not very educated, but liked to pretend it is, just like it likes to pretend it's heterosexual.)

But anyway, the funny part is how it says 'Not my business' despite commenting, repeatedly, at length, with lots of hyperbolic imagery, on every single thing Dan says. I know, I know, it wants to claim it disagrees with Dan's easy freedom and acceptance of self. But that 's just because it's scared. Come out of the closet, Seattleblues. You're so obviously, painfully wanting a blow job.

Seattleblues, everyone knew you would surface after NY's vote on gay marriage last night.

Christians follow the words of Christ. Mind you, those words were said over a couple of thousand years ago, & those transcribing those words brought their own agenda to the book. But the two main ones: Love the lord your god (you seem to think you're doing that) & LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF/do unto others, as you would have them do to you.

You don't strike me as a Christian who follows that second bit, at all. No, you are a Pharisee, very grand on the outside about how right & moral you are. Ugh. People like you are why I left the church.

Great that you are entertained. But gay youth being supported instead of intimidated & told they are wrong is a force for good, not destruction. Sheesh.

About 11% of this country's population now has the opportunity to avail themselves of gay marriage. Don't want one? Don't get one.

You don't choose your sexual orientation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJtjqLUHY…

First cousins can marry in many states.

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/gra…

Your BS "gays can choose to marry a person of the opposite gender!" is neither clever nor original.

You're a recyclable troll: before you there was Loveschild. There is always someone like you on gay-friendly message bases, & I never comprehend why you're there. Contrarian? Curmudgeon? Enjoy typing pointlessly, as no minds will be changed? You keep boasting about your oh so fabulous life, yet, you manage to make time for Slog. Why?

Enjoy being on the wrong side of history. It's only a matter of time.

****************
Dan: As for Target, stay on them about their trackable contributions, but they made an effort. It's all just cheap overseas manufactured goods, one way or the other.

@ 53, back & forth would imply that Dan writes even a 10th as much towards Seattleblues as he writes to "Danny".

@56 Not Dan. The Sloggers. Thought that was utterly obvious, but this is the Internet, so every little bit needs explaining....

@57 Yer right & I shouldn't trollfeed. Just had a frustrated moment there. Over it.

@48: Many states do recognize marriage between first cousins. That's determined by the state legislature. Just like same-sex marriage. Which marriages a state grants legal recognition to is a policy question. The argument here is that it's better public policy to recognize same-sex marriages. States can do what they want, but I don't really see why they shouldn't recognize same-sex marriages.

http://gawker.com/5816162/union-says-tar…

SeattleBlues is such an expert troll, it wouldn't surprise me if he's actually someone on the Slog staff--or even Dan The Man himself.