When I was taking Blue Bitch up from LA that one time I passed through Ukiah where they were having some sort of harvest festival, I guess on the pretense that anyone grew wholesome legal crops around there, and one of the booths was Wal-Mart, where they were just giving away vendor-level food and bags of candy, I also took a card that referenced their hopes to build a store on the edge of town. So they were cultivating goodwill, for political purposes.

That’s why ‘90s Wal-Mart was all about not selling pornography, and music only with Bowdlerized lyrics – so as to appear congruent with rural culture (that over the '80s had been significantly redefined in religious-moral terms) for political purposes, to lubricate local government approval processes their business depended on.

So if you’re trying to influence major retailers re: queer stuff in culture that’s one angle. A significant difference though is that Wal-Mart already largely built out through rural America in the early-mid 90s (and Target in inner suburbs and exurbs in the late 90s-early 2000s). And of course the big box model entirely faces challenge from online retail now, so all the pieces are going to be in slightly different places with different angles between them.