Another incident in a Target restroom underscores the dangers of the retail chain’s nearly two-year-old policy of allowing “transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity” and renews calls for a boycott. On March 25, a man exposed his genitals to a young girl in a restroom stall in a Chicago Target store.

This is at least the second incident where a Target guest has been endangered by another guest taking advantage of the policy by using an intimate facility that should reasonably be segregated by biological sex.

The first instance of this to get any attention was less than three months into the new policy. A man who “identifies as a woman” was arrested in Idaho after taking pictures of a woman trying on clothes in a women’s dressing room. The man, Sean Patrick Smith, 46 — who clearly has a sexual interest in women — used his mobile phone to take those pictures under the wall dividing his stall from that of his victim. Not surprisingly, the story got little coverage by national media outside of a report by Fox News. A local media outlet reported at the time:

Bonneville County Sgt. Bryan Lovell says deputies were called to a disturbance at Target on 25th East just after 5 p.m. Monday.

A woman told them a man, dressed in women’s clothing, had entered a fitting room in the women’s clothing section of the store. Deputies say the suspect was seen taking photos of a woman in a stall next to him while she was changing.

“The woman was begging for help as she chased the man out the door,” a witness inside the store, who asked not to be named, tells EastIdahoNews.com. “She kept saying she wanted those pictures deleted.”

The suspect, later identified as Smith, left the store, and Lovell says detectives located him Tuesday afternoon.

This writer refers to the most recent example of Target’s dangerous policy putting people in danger as at least the second such instance because there are likely other incidents that also did not receive much (if any) media attention. Furthermore, statistics show that many sexually related crimes go unreported, so that could also be a factor here. That is especially true in an environment where reporting such a crime would thrust the victim into the spotlight of a politically loaded debate about the rights of people who suffer from a mental disorder that causes them to be confused about their sexual identity.

In fact, even before the new policy, Target — along with other retail businesses — had multiple instances of men violating the privacy of women and children — sometimes even assaulting them in restrooms and dressing rooms. Breitbart even compiled a list of the top 25 stories of this at the time that Target introduced the policy. This policy abets those criminals in their crimes.

In the most recent example, an NBC affiliate in Chicago reported that “a mother was with her young child at about 4:08 p.m. in the women’s restroom at the Target at 1154 S. Clark when the man entered and insisted he had to go to the bathroom, according to Chicago Police.” The man then entered the stall where the young girl was and exposed himself to her, used the bathroom and left. Unbelievably, Target has attempted to brush the incident aside by saying the man was drunk at the time. Target spokesperson Danielle Schumann issued a statement, saying in part, “At Target, the safety and security of our guests is critically important to us,” and adding, Immediately after a guest notified us of this incident, we called law enforcement and provided them with video footage from our store entrance to help with their investigation.”

The New American reached out to Chicago police, but rather than giving this writer a statement about whether the man has been arrested, the person who answered the phone hung up when this writer asked the question. Apparently, the political climate is not conducive to protecting innocent children.

And while Target prefers to ignore the evidence that the policy is dangerous, many others see that evidence as a valid reason to boycott the retail chain. This writer addressed this issue in a previous article, entitled “Target's Bathroom Policy: Politically Correct, But Dead Wrong”:

The announcement was made April 19 on the company's website. Within days the Boycott Target Petition was launched by the American Family Association (AFA) and #BoycottTarget began trending on Facebook with many posting pictures of Walmart receipts and Target REDcards cut into pieces. As of this writing, the petition has almost a million signatures. As of 2015, Target had 1,802 stores in the United States. That means the average store just lost at least an average of 555 customers. I say at least because that counts only the customers who have signed the petition.

That article included quotes from people all over the country who expressed their beliefs — based in good logic and common sense — that the policy opened the doors for men with deviant desires to use the policy as a smokescreen for abusing women and children.

In response to this most recent crime, evangelist Franklin Graham has called on his 6.7 million Facebook followers to renew the boycott against Target. That boycott, launched by the American Family Association in the immediate wake of the policy’s introduction, had more than a million signers and was at least largely responsible for the chain’s loss of roughly 20 percent of its value. The company later began the process of putting single-stall “family restrooms” and “unisex changing rooms” in all of its stores.

That milquetoast step is clearly not enough to protect women and children who visit Target stores. It is time for Target to face reality and change its policy to reflect its promise that “the safety and security” of guests is important. Because actions — not words — show the truth. Target’s “transgender” policy also states, “Everyone deserves to feel like they belong.” One is left to wonder whether “everyone” includes innocent women and children who are being hurt and abused as a direct consequence of a policy that prefers the sexually perverse mental disorder of “transgenders” over the safety and security of the next woman or child who will be a victim of someone taking advantage of this policy.

If this renewed boycott has even a fraction of the success as it did previously, Target may have to make that decision or face the prospect of losing even more value.

Photo: AP Images