Wow. Just wow. Target — which has a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign for the their workplace environment and support of LGBT causes and importanlty for many consumers focuses on budget style, featuring some great designers like Alexander McQueen, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Zac Posen — is now off my spending list for a while.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel and his wife donated $5,000 each — the maximum allowable — to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachman’s campaign, and Target itself donated $150,000 to MN Forward, a PAC which is supporting Tom Emmer’s run for governor of Minnesota, reports The Awl.com.

In a letter sent out today, Steinhafel says

Target has a history of supporting organizations and candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who seek to advance policies aligned with our business objectives, such as job creation and economic growth. MN Forward is focused specifically on those issues and is committed to supporting candidates from any party who will work to improve the state’s job climate. However, it is also important to note that we rarely endorse all advocated positions of the organizations or candidates we support, and we do not have a political or social agenda.

But what if the candidates supported by the PAC don’t have your employees’ best interests at heart? Does that help the job climate of the state overall? Or does that create an environment where the corporation is a mini-state with its own rules that can benefit or harm the employees because the corporation is removed of state regulation?

Here’s some info about Emmer from Gayrights.Change.org

Tom Emmer (the anti-gay Minnesota gubernatorial candidate that Target’s $150,000 made its way to) wants to bar gays and lesbians from getting married, and is a friend and financial supporter of a ministry that advocates violence and discrimination toward LGBT people. And like it or not, Target financially supported his campaign, even if the money wasn’t a direct contribution.

Michele Bachmann has dropped some nifty anti-LGBT comments in her speeches and has a rotten record on supporting LGBT rights including voting against the repeal of DADT and voting against expanding hate crimes legislation to include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. Here are a couple of her comments collected by Gayrights.Change.org.

Bachmann said if gay marriage were to become legal:

[Gay marriage] is an earthquake issue. This will change our state forever. Because the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.

On people who are gay or lesbian:

If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement.

Best Buy — which supports many of the same LGBT causes as Target —  just added to MN Forward’s kitty with a $150,000 donation, proving that their profits are the most important thing in the long run, not the long-term rights of all the people in areas where they do business.

[H/T TheAwl.com, Gayrights.Change.org]

(photo: kurafire)

Three faces of Pride will ride as Grand Marshals in this year’s New York City Pride March, June 27:

Judy Shepard, mother of hate-slain gay teen Matthew Shepard, co-founded with her husband Dennis the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which is dedicated to working toward the causes championed by Matthew during his life: social justice, diversity awareness and education, and equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Lt. Dan Choi, West Point graduate and Iraq veteran fluent in Arabic, received a notice of  discharge from the United States Army for announcing “I am gay” on the Rachel Maddow show, a direct challenge to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. (That discharge is still classified as “pending.”) A  tireless champion of equal rights, Lt. Choi was recently arrested for chaining himself to the White House fence during a demonstration for LGBT rights.

Constance McMillen, who wanted to wear a tuxedo and take her girlfriend to the prom at her Mississippi high school. When those rights were denied by the administration at Itawamba Agricultural High School, McMillen’s case was taken up by the ACLU, and a federal judge ruled that Constance’s rights were violated. While the school went ahead and organized a prom, the majority of her classmates attended a private “dance party” several miles away. Previously, Constance had stood up for the rights of trans classmate Juin Baize.