No, Target isn’t putting urinals in the women’s toilets
A fake Facebook post is going viral, attempting to scare people into joining an anti-trans boycott of Target.
More than 700,000 people have joined a boycott of the superstore led by the conservative American Family Association in the past few weeks over the store’s long-held transgender policy.
It comes after Target confirmed it “welcomes transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.”
But the boycott is being perpetuated by a string of fake smears – with one viral Facebook post in support of the boycott claiming to show urinals being installed in women’s bathrooms.
The post, which has over 14,000 shares, claims: “It’s true. I’m in the women’s bathroom at a Target north of LA…. they actually took out a stall for women in order to accommodate the ones who have giblets… yes, these are urinals… for men …and so the war on women progresses.
It includes a picture purporting to show urinals being installed in a women’s bathroom – but fact-checking websites Snopes and PolitiFact have both thoroughly debunked the post.
Snopes verified that the image was not even taken in a women’s restroom – but rather a men’s room that was undergoing refurbishment at a Los Angeles Target store.
Meanwhile, a Target spokesperson confirmed zero stores have female toilets with urinals in.
The spokesperson said: “That is 100% untrue. We have not made any changes to the restrooms. We have not added any urinals to any women’s restrooms nor do we have any plans to do so.”
PolitiFact ranked the claim as ‘Pants on Fire’ false, noting that the author of the claim has not responded to any requests to substantiate her post. The post itself has privacy settings that allows it to be shared by others, but prohibits comments.
PinkNews found that the post’s author ‘likes’ the Facebook pages of a number of Republicans who oppose transgender rights, including Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Glenn Beck and Mitt Romney, as well as far-right group Britain First.
So, in the words of Sally Field…
Radio host Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is one of the main organisers of the AFA boycott petition.
Fischer has a long history of exaggerated anti-LGBT rhetoric, blaming gay people for the Holocaust and claiming that freedom of religion only applies to Christians.
The activist, who has previously called for homosexuality to be re-criminalised, insists that “Hitler himself was an active homosexual” and gays were “at the heart” of the Nazi party.
He insists: “Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs.
“Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual soldiers basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Browshirts, were male homosexuals.”
