Lady Gaga Aims at Target, Apparently Hits a Bullseye

So, with Lady Gaga’s new album Born This Way on it’s way, the preorder madness has begun.

And when I say madness, well…see, Gaga partnered with Target to offer a special version of the album along with a digital download of her single “Born This Way.” Which seems like a pretty good deal, until you get down to the nitty-gritty.

A lot of people took issue with Lady Gaga releasing her album and self-proclaimed “gay anthem” via Target, who came under fire in recent years for contributing to the political campaign of Minnesota Republican Tom Emmer. Target’s reasoning was that Emmer’s stance was better for their business practices.

But…hold up. Emmer has, in the past, opposed marriage equality as well as supported a Christian rock band known as You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, who’s lead singer has accused gays of child molestation and claims that Muslim countries who execute gays are “more moral than even the American Christians.”

So, for the very pro-gay Gaga to partner with an organization under fire for anti-gay political contributions seemed, well, really effing weird, you know?

But behold the power of Lady Gaga: before she’d agree to the exclusive pre-order with Target, she struck a deal with the chain requiring them to work to repair their relationship with the LGBT community.

Gaga stated “Part of my deal with Target is that they have to start affiliating themselves with LGBT charity groups and begin to reform and make amends for the mistakes they’ve made in the past…our relationship is hinged upon their reform in the company to support the gay community and to redeem the mistakes they’ve made supporting those groups.”

It now appears that Target has installed a new set of guidelines for political contributions, hoping that something like the Emmer mistake will never happen again. So far there’s no way of knowing if they’ll stand by it, but odds are if they want to stay in Lady Gaga’s good graces, they’ll be more careful.

After all, I have a feeling you don’t wanna cross Mama Monster on this one.