When I was a little girl, my favorite movie was Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” I watched it at least once a week, and to this day, I still have most of the lines memorized. When I was 12, my parents took my siblings and me to Disney World in Florida and it remains one of my favorite vacations.
Suffice it to say, Disney had a special place in my heart, and I was looking forward to making similar memories with my kids. Notice the past tense verbiage. Here’s why my family canceled Disney in our home and how you can push back against Disney’s LGBTQ indoctrination agenda.
Disney’s Not-So-Secret Agenda
In March, Disney made headlines when it publically opposed Florida’s House Bill 1557, “Parental Rights in Education.” Specifically, Disney CEO Bob Chapek stated that Disney fought the critically dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” bill behind the scenes and released a statement that said, “Florida’s HB 1557, also known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, should never have passed and should never have been signed into law. Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.”
If Disney had only opposed HB 1557, parents like me might have overlooked it. However, on Mar 29, Christopher Rufo, an investigative journalist, released several shocking videos from a Disney all-hands meeting in response to HB 1557.
In one video, Disney executive producer Latoya Raveneau said her team is implementing a “not-at-all secret gay agenda,” and Disney’s leadership supports this, “I don’t have to be afraid. Let’s have these two characters kiss in the background. I was just, wherever I could, just basically adding queerness. No one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me.”
In another video, Karey Burke, president of Disney General Entertainment, stated, “We have many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories, and yet, we don’t have enough leads and narrative in which gay characters just get to be characters and not have to be about gay stories.”
Burke went on to add that her goal is a minimum of 50 percent of Disney’s characters identifying as LGBTQIA or racial minorities in upcoming stories.
The Straw that Broke Disney
Truthfully, Disney isn’t the best protector of childhood innocence. In fact, Disney is infamous for including subtle obscenity in its movies. For example:
- In “The Little Mermaid,” Triton’s castle has a penis, and the priest gets a boner when Eric marries Ursula.
- In “Cars,” there’s an advertisement for a strip club — Lightning McQueen passes a sign that promises “all convertible waitresses.”
- In “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Esmeralda appears in the flames completely nude.
- In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” Jessica Rabbit is thrown from a car and spreads her legs, showing her “bits.”
The above is just the tip of the iceberg. If you Google “Disney hidden images,” you’ll be shocked by everything hidden in plain sight — indeed, there are quite a few scenes in Disney’s movies that cause me to pause and reevaluate if it’s OK for my child to watch. But to be honest, subtle imagery didn’t make me uncomfortable enough to cancel Disney.
Lately, however, Disney’s movies have contained in-your-face content that I consider age-inappropriate. “Turning Red,” for example, is about a young girl contending with puberty, and in “Onward,” Officer Spector is a lesbian. Not exactly the kind of content I’m ready for my 7-year-old to watch.
Content such as the above changed my overall perspective of Disney. Before, I felt that Disney’s content was safe and age-appropriate for my kids. Now, I must carefully screen Disney shows and movies for content that’s either too mature or contradicts our family’s values.
When I learned Disney’s leadership is actively looking to add more LGBTQ content and characters and push a “not-at-all secret gay agenda” that focuses on sexuality, I’d had enough and called it quits. Here’s why I took that step, and you should, too.
Public Companies and Revenue
The main goal of virtually every publically owned company is profits. Even when a company pursues social or environmental goals, the end objective of that pursuit is more profits. Thus, when a company like Disney hears leftist activists are angry, it responds by trying to placate the activists in hopes that they won’t “cancel” them and negatively impact profits.
Over the past few years, this cancelation strategy has worked well for LGBTQ activists, and they’ve effectively compelled companies to adopt LGBTQ inclusive policies (pronouns, anyone?). But threats of cancelation can also work for conservatives. Consider the following.
On March 28, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1557 into law. In response, Disney called an all-hands meeting, resulting in the above-recorded videos. Before the videos were released on March 29, Disney’s stock was trading at over $142 a share. But, after the release on the afternoon of March 29, the hashtag #BoycottDisney started trending. By the morning of March 30, Disney’s stock had started its drop. As of this writing, Disney’s stock sits at just over $107 per share. That’s a decline of almost 25 percent — significant for any company.
One of the main reasons Disney’s stock is declining is the parental backlash against its released videos. Parents have rightly called for Disney to desist from its current agenda or face cancelation. And many have taken it a step further and publicly stated they’re canceling Disney+, canceling Disney trips, and won’t watch Disney movies — I’m one of those parents. Disney’s customer is parents, and when you alienate your customer, investors have concerns about future profits.
Applied Pressure
In the court of investor opinion, Disney made a massive misstep with parents, and investors are reacting to the threat of lost revenue. However, the decline in stock price can quickly reverse if Disney shows that parents didn’t follow through with their threats of cancellation in its next quarterly report.
Conversely, if enough parents follow through with canceling Disney+, Disney vacations, and all things Disney, this will put significant pressure on Disney to abandon its LGBTQ agenda and return to apolitical programming. But for that to happen, parents and those who disagree with Disney’s latest agenda need to realize that change doesn’t happen quickly and stay committed to not having Disney in their homes for the foreseeable future.
Children should NOT be swayed one direction or another. Sexuality shouldn’t even be something that’s mentioned, kids are impressionable & should NEVER be manipulated like Disney is trying to do. Also the fact that Lightyear had that same sex kiss scene is a COMPLETE RUINING OF IMMERSION. NO MOVIE in the 90’s, ESPECIALLY ones that kids would see WOULD EVER touch on same sex topics….that just didn’t happen then & shows what shitty writing the movie has.