Anti-gay group exploits Orlando shooting to encourage bigots to join Target boycott over bathrooms

A right-wing Christian group is exploiting the terrorist attack on a gay nightclub in Florida to promote its boycott against big box retailer Target, PinkNews reports.

The American Family Association sent out a newsletter claims to mourn the attack that killed or wounded more than 100 people Pulse night club in Orlando. But it quickly launches into a call to recruit more people to boycott Target.

"Since Target announced this dangerous policy in late April over 1.3 million people have signed the boycott Target pledge," AFA wrote in its statement. "This doesn’t include the millions of Americans who didn’t sign the pledge but feel the same way about Target. This week we are announcing a new initiative to the #BoycottTarget pledge called Target Isn’t Listening. This initiative seeks to add 50,000 potential Target shoppers to our boycott Target pledge this week, June 13-17."

Target has been the focus of anti-gay activists since its CEO vowed to let trans customers use bathrooms that match their gender identity. Earlier this month, a small explosive went off in the bathroom of an Illinois store.

PinkNews points out that AFA's resident radio host, Bryan Fischer, wants to re-criminalize being gay and believes that LGBT people "were at the heart" of the Nazi party.

"Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs," PinkNews quotes Fischer as saying. “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.”