Watch This Crowd of Parents Sing “Jesus Loves Me” to Shut Up a Transgender Supporter

Conservative protesters are also bringing their religion—and possibly their guns—to Target stores.


Protests against gender-inclusive bathrooms are on the rise. On Monday, according to local news reports, more than 500 people showed up at a school board meeting in Horry County, South Carolina, to debate whether transgender kids should be able to use bathrooms of their choice. Most of the parents objected, with some holding signs that read “Keep kids safe” or “It’s common sense.” After one woman stood up to show her support for transgender rights, the others did their best to shut her up, by breaking into a hymn. Watch the video above (the hymn comes at the end), via the Sun News.

In states in the Midwest and South, protesters have been showing up at Target stores, after the retail giant announced on April 19 that transgender customers and employees would be welcome to use whichever bathrooms correspond with their gender identity. More than 1 million people have since signed a petition to boycott the retailer, claiming that “Target’s policy is exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims.” The American Family Association, a conservative nonprofit that organized the boycott, says it has been “testing” Target’s policy by sending men who aren’t transgender into the store’s women’s bathrooms.

In Illinois, the police responded on Monday to a 911 call reporting an “active shooter” at a Target store. The person turned out to be 39-year-old Michael Merichko, who was protesting the bathroom policy by walking around the store with a Bible, allegedly causing a disturbance. Police found no weapons at the scene, but the man was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, according to a statement from the police. Merichko explained his take on the situation in a video on Facebook, in which he says he was simply reading scriptures to himself in the store. “Here’s the concern,” he says. “I do not want some wicked pervert in the same bathroom as my wife or my daughter who self-identifies at that time as a woman.”

In Florida, Anita Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal group that has supported restrictive bathroom bills across the country, pledged to take her Glock .45 into the retailer’s restrooms to protect herself. She said she’s not afraid of transgender people, but of “perverts” who will pretend to be transgender and use the policy to gain access to women’s bathrooms, even if they don’t identify as women.

Staver may have failed to note that Target adopted a policy of prohibiting firearms on its premises nationwide after its stores became a high-profile battleground for gun rights activists in 2014.

Below is one of many videos posted to YouTube by other Target protesters. In it, a man wearing a shirt that says “Abortion is Murder” and “Jesus Is Life” shouts at employees near the front door: “You people that work in here, shame on you! Find another job!” (Who recorded the video and where remain unclear.)

Law enforcement experts have debunked the “bathroom predator” myth. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Detective Nicole Monroe, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore Police Department, told the Washington Blade of the notion that people would pose as transgender in order to get inside women’s bathrooms to sexually abuse women and children. According to Media Matters for America, there have been no such incidents in any of the cities where transgender people are allowed to use public bathrooms of their choice.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate