Disney employees are showing their outrage over the entertainment company’s decision not to denounce Florida’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, which would limit discussion of sexuality and gender in Florida schools.
The Florida Senate passed the bill Tuesday, and it now goes to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s desk. It’s the latest effort by Republican lawmakers to remove the teaching of LGBTQ issues from schools.
Florida’s Senate bill reads, “A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels,” according to the text.
Ben Siemon, an actor and writer whose credits include Disney’s DuckTales, posted an impassioned video plea calling for Disney to say the bill is wrong.
Siemon credits one of his middle school teachers for helping him understand that it was OK to be gay. Had there been a bill like the one being considered in Florida, Siemon says, “That would’ve never happened to me. I would’ve been left alone and scared. And LGBT kids are going to be left alone and scared and hurt by this bill.”
Siemon implored the company to stop supporting those politicians, ending with the words, “Disney, please say gay.”
According to the accountability news site Popular Information, “in the last two years, Disney has donated $197,162 to members of the Florida legislature that have already voted for the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ legislation,” including to sponsors of the bill, Florida Rep. Joe Harding (R) and state Sen. Dennis Baxley (R).
Animator and director Dana Terrace, who created Disney’s animated series The Owl House, joined in the protest. Terrace called for action: a livestream for charity on March 13 to go to organizations that support LGBT youth.
“Working for this company has…made me so distraught,” Terrace says in the video. “I hate, I hate having moral quandaries about how I feed myself and how I support my loved ones.”
On Monday, Disney CEO Bob Chapek wrote in a memo to employees, “I believe the best way for our company to bring about lasting change is through the inspiring content we produce and the diverse organizations we support.”
Yet he seemed to leave the door open for future changes in the company’s approach: “I can also share that Geoff Morrell, our new Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, will be reassessing our advocacy strategies around the world—including political giving,” Chapek wrote in the memo, which Disney provided to NPR.
The above comes from a March 8 story by Laist.
LGBT is a choice influenced by social acceptability. If society praises LGBT, you’ll get more people choosing it. If society considers LGBT undesirable, you’ll get less of it. Look around. They used to say LG (before B and T and the other letters were things) was 10% and born that way. It never was. It was maybe 2%. Now it’s as much as 25% for LGBT among Generation Z women? Get real. Totally a choice.
It’s not okay to be gay. It’s worse to act on gay inclinations, but the inclinations themselves are not neutral nor good.
Leftist propaganda and groupthink to the contrary notwithstanding.
Preventing leftist teachers from influencing impressionable kids to adopt unhealthy self-identities or lifestyles is a common-sense step that needs to be taken.
We’re killing our society with LGBT poison.
Your logic is rather fallacious: spousal abuse was considered rather low, until society decided that it no longer valued the macho, “keep your woman in line” narrative. Voila, more women admitting to the abuse they endured. NAME admits that 2% were probably born gay, so that is an admission that it’s not a choice. However, until more people felt safe about coming out, the percentage stayed low. Additionally, the concept of “if you praise it, more will do it” with its anti-corollary of “if society doesn’t accept it, more will not be it” is totally rather fallacious. Leftist teachers? Are you stating that being on the left of moderate implies that they automatically are trying to gay-up their students? Perhaps they’re simply given safe harbor where IF they’re gay or questioning. When it’s safe to admit something, there will be a higher percentage saying so. Hiding how many by making their society or circle of friends feel its bad is NOT meaning there are fewer – it simply means fewer are admitting to their questioning or their being gay.
Mr. Dremel, this website wouldn’t even publish my comment asking NAME when NAME chose to not to be gay. It seemed to me a fair question. If someone makes a choice, one would have considered the options and chosen something one had some affiliation for, this way or that.
Choosing whether one is gay or straight (or bi etc) is like asking someone to choose whether they like broccoli or they don’t like broccoli. Either you like it or you don’t, you don’t “choose” to like it or dislike it. I don’t think President Bush (41) chose to not like broccoli, despite his mother trying to force him to eat it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFbGK6MBzM0
YFC explain away those creatures that want to make pedophilia a sexual orientation yes it is a fact I think the twisted term is Minor Attracted Persons. If we lived in a more just time they would be impaled on stakes.
Pedophilia is not something I support. Who could? I’ve been clear about this yet you continue to bring it up. Ride another horse.
YFC I will continue to bring it up because that is the end game of the entire LGBT syndicate
Such things should not even be discussed in elementary grades Now some people are encouraging pre-teen girls to bind their chests, so they will not develop normally. It is child abuse. It is reminiscent of ancient cultures who bound baby girls’ feet to make them smaller and daintier, but the end result was they became crippled for life and could barely walk. Normal Jedeo- Christian sexuality should be all that is taught in our books — no incest, sodomy, etc. Even more orthodox Buddhism and other religions teach that too.
I did not mean that detailed sexuality should be put in books for young children, just that two parent (mother and father) families should be used as the ideal in children’s books, and that no normally developing child should be told that he or she can change his or her sex as that is really impossible.
Changes for children born with bodily defects or from accidents should be handled discretely, so that the other children are not disturbed by it and the child patient embarrassed. Parents of children with such problems should help other parents but in more discreet ways than are done now many times.
So, where are your peer reviewed references that aren’t from conservative media that shows proof of an egregious amount of parents or others forcing their girls to bind themselves.
Don’t need “reviewed references”, It’s all over the internet, twitter, etc.
I have sat in doctor’s offices and had conversations with people who all of a sudden mentioned their pardner (same sex), That’s quite awkward to say the least. People used to refer to such people as friends and leave it at that.
One woman in a bank talking on her cell phone was telling the person about another female friend moving in with her boyfriend. She talked so loudly the whole bank heard her. I said to the woman behind me, “I’m glad she did not give the woman’s full name and address too.”
Honestly, what do conversations you overhear have anything to do with anything?
Anne TE believes everything on the internet must be true. OMW
Wrong! Anne TE has the opposite problem. She looks at all sides as she believes very little that is on the internet. I am very much a daughter of St. Thomas the Doubter. My mother told me that I always had my head in the clouds, but I took a test test, and the results said I was very much a realist.
That is one reason I will have none of the “transgender” sex change garbage. My motto — fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. As Ronald Reagan said, “Trust but verify.”
Stop being ridiculous. So-called “peer-reviews” from academics are totally unnecessary! Anne TE is correct.
Disney employees are showing their outrage? Sure they are…like…7 of them maybe? I’m sure the kid that runs the deep fryer at the Star Wars Cantina is just outraged….gimme a break…what would these clowns do without the internet?
Walt Disney would be outraged at these terrible employees. Walt Disney stood for family values and good, clean, decent Christian morals! I think it is extremely inappropriate for sexuality or gender issues to be discussed in any school, at any grade level,
Parents must always be the ones to teach their children about sexuality– as well as gender issues– along with Marriage and morality, as taught by Christ.
My comment of Mar. 10 at 4:19am was edited. At the end of my third sentence, the editors left a sentence they chopped-up, ending with a comma– but it should read, “…at any grade level, K-12.” I also stressed in my comnent that sexuality and gender issues should never be discussed with kids, without teaching Christian Marriage and morality.
You do understand that we are talking about public schools and that the first amendment prohibits the teaching of Christianity by government and that not all students in public schools are Christian and that not all parents want their kids taught Christian morality. You get all these things, right?
Of course, religion is not taught in public schools. However, our nation, and all of our institutions, were founded upon morality and decency, derived from Judeo-Christian civilization. When I said “Christian Marriage ” I meant, traditional marriage between one man and one woman. Yes, all children must be taught respect, decency, and common morality, which is derived from our Judeo-Christian heritage, in America.
No. What you meant was a Christianized sharia law.
Blessed too– No such thing exists. Children are a big responsibility. Glad to know that Walt Disney did not tolerate evil and filth to children and teens, in his employees. He did much better than many of our Catholic prelates– he simply fired filthy child/teen gay sex pervert molesters, and kept his place of employment decent, responsible, clean-cut, respectable, and safe.
I am wondering how many LGBTQ+ children there are in grades Kindergarten through Third Grade.
It’s been a long time, but I don’t remember having romantic or sexual feelings for anyone at that age. If someone would have told me that I could be in love with a boy or a girl I would have said: “I’d rather have cookies” or “I want a puppy!”
What are we expecting from such young children?
Father Higgins yours is a good question though recall that not a small number of students have same sex parents. Why are we making kids feel shame about their own parents. They didn’t choose their parents, right? Yet somehow when kids have natural questions about their parents, teachers can’t even say that families come in different shapes and sizes. There are single parents. There are parents who adopted, sometimes they kids of a different race which always raises questions. There are kids raised by their grandparents or God parents. And we know that these are delicate questions but we should never punish kids because their parents don’t look like the Cleavers. This law stigmatizes those kids because their parents can only be whispered about instead of brought into their legitimate place in the school community and the life of the children.
No, same-sex “parents” are not like other parents– they are two people of the same sex, living in a sinful relationship. Children should never be raised in such a sinful and psychologically dangerous home. Gay “marriage” and gay sex acts should be illegal. The human family, as made by God– consists of a father and mother and their children. It should only be in unusual circumstances, such as death or divorce, that a poor child is raised by one parent, or by a relative. Today, America is the country with the highest number of children in the world, living in single-parent homes. Many are also born out-of-wedlock. The breakdown of Traditional Marriage and the Family, in America, is a tragedy.
Of course same sex parents aren’t like other parents. That’s exactly why it should be talked about. And even if you think the parents are sinful, why do you want to punish the kid for that? How about we pass a “Don’t Say Divorced and Remarried” bill? How about we pass a “Don’t talk about your Parents if they had an Abortion” Bill. We don’t and shouldn’t punish kids for what there parents do.
What if a teacher in K-3 said “We treat everybody with love, even those with dry skin.”
First thought would be “Who has dry skin?” Second thought “Oh no. It’s me” Third thought: “I must be really unlovable if a teacher has to tell kids that they have to love me.” Fourth thought: “I can never come back here.”
Mom: Yes you have to go to school. Why don’t you want to go to school?”
Me: It’s boring.
Mom: You have to go. It is the law.
My thought: Ok I’ll go but I will not talk to anybody. Even if the teacher said they have to love me, I know they are just faking it.
Mom never finds out what really happened.
Teacher never figures out what happened.
Friends don’t know why I stopped talking to them. They think I am mad at them.
Lonely for life..
YFC, children are very young and innocent, and need to be protected from the evils and dangers of the world. Kids go to school only to learn to read and write, and other academics. Parents should instruct children, not to allow any inappropriate touching– and to immediately run to get their parents, or an adult in authority, if they are threatened with pedophilia behavior. When they are old enough, their parents are the ones– not the schools– to explain evils and dangers in the world to them– along with Christ’s moral teachings.
“Of course same sex parents aren’t like other parents. That’s exactly why it should be talked about. ” yes they should be mocked and vilified
There is no law that says same sex couples cannot be brought into the school community.
Sure. They just can’t be talked about. They get cancelled whenever the discusssion of parenthood comes up. On PTA day, they can’t be introduced. On pain of criminal prosecution.
Where did you see that in the law?
me– yes, there is a law — Christ’s Law– which many in our nation have broken. Same-sex couples should not be raising children– a great danger to their children, and to the entire community.
Children are going to recognize that something is wrong, even though it is not their fault, on their own. I was in a first grade classroom where a little boy was all excited that he was going to be a ring bearer for a wedding. In the discussion, another little boy spoke up and said that he hated weddings. When the teacher asked him why he did not like weddings, the child replied, “My mother and father never got married.” Anyone who thinks their sins do not affect their children in the wrong way better think again.
And because you have a quaint little story, tens of thousands of Florida kids should be ashamed of their parents.
Kids are lucky to have loving parents and yes there are parents who don’t love their kids. But it is certainly not the role of schools or governments to regulate which parents are loving and which ones are to be shamed. Wasn’t in my constitution!
Does your “constitution” address parents paying Catholic school tuition by performing abortions?
Children are going to recognize that something is different. That doesn’t mean children should be stigmatized because they live in a different family and it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. Any child raised in a family that is not the Cleavers knows something is different. But being raised in a different family doesn’t mean government should stigmatize different by making discussions about their family taboo as though the child herself did something unspeakably wrong. They didn’t. They just came to school.
It does mean something is wrong. Two men should not live together in the way a husband and wife would. It’s wrong.
Oh course YFC want children as young as 5 to be groomed for the sake of perversion. Once “gay marriage” was “legitimized” the next target was of course children
So let’s be clear here. You believe that children should be stigmatized because you and a fraction of the school board believe her parents live in sin. Is that your point? Again I ask you, would you ask that kids born to a mom who aborted be stigmatized? Would you want kids born to a single mom stigmatized?
“Your Fellow Catholic’s” comment is another example of the classic “straw man” illogical fallacy, commonly employed by the commentariat here. This law is not about “stigmatizing” children or even their parents. This law is about protecting the rights and the privilege of parents to educate their children about sexual matters without the adverse influence of teachers and the school district which are increasingly becoming hostile to the Christian faith.
Straw man.
Fr. John Higgins, in conversation, I have heard both lesbian and gay persons and transgender persons say that grade school or even earlier was when they began to notice their feelings for same sex children (not sex but affection) and that they felt different from their same sex peers.
A lot of kids have romantic feelings in grade school. I think for some people that starts about 7. It starts sooner for girls than boys, possibly.
My neighbors had boyfriends starting at about the age of 4.
Yes, some children have crushes at an early age, including on their teachers, fellow students and their cousins, but such crushes need to be directed in the right way and stopped if necessary. My grandmother told me quite early, about third or fourth grade that I could not marry my male cousin. Do you really think some other “concerned” adult should have told me I could marry my cousin. I think not! Such behavior on the part of unrelated adults is nothing more than “grooming” them to indulge in wrongful, dangerous and unhealthy behavior.
Everything is up to the parents to explain to children. The children belong to the parents not the government. The government cannot even do their own job and want want to control the innocent children.
I get your point Paula, I do. But the reality is that kids experience other kids outside the home, not as much inside the home. There are kids who have same sex parents and even at that age, the subject will come up. And nobody wants these kids subjected to sex education, all they need to be taught is that there are different types of families and kids need to be reassured that whether they come from the Cleavers, or single parent homes, or were raised by their God parents, or were adopted,, their parents love them just the same.
Not all parents love their kids and not all parents treat their kids well. Often times the teachers are the ones who have to report the parents.
The law does not really say “don’t say gay.”
Louis Van Amstel had a problem with a teacher talking about it, as I am sure you are aware.
Why would you want to encourage that?
You have discussions with kids and kids say the darndest things.
In three years the kids in school with two married opposite sex parents will be in the minority.
It’s true not all parents love their kids. What is your point?
My point is “Teacher, leave those kids alone.”
There is nothing, nothing a meddling teacher can say that won’t cause a problem for some kid.
Not to teach LGBTQ in K-3? It should not be taught I K-12. Maybe if real subjects were taught kids would graduate knowing how to read and know a little about our country. How about saying the Pledge of Allegiance (yes, including under God) at the start of every school day?
Sure. Let’s not teach anything to kids. The holocaust was horrible, so we best not teach that. Attila the Hun. NO WAY. The massacres during the Civil Rights Movements on the Pettis Bridge or the murder of Medger Evers. Let’s only teach butterflies and purple daffodils from K-12!!
False analogy.
No. Deviant sex acts in the gutter — are not for innocent little children to know anything about. Our society needs to get rid of all this 1969 Stonewall Bar filth– a great danger to children.
My comment of March 10th at 10:41pm was edited. Originally, I said that our society needs to get rid of all this “1969 Stonewall Bar filth”– a great danger to children. My original quotation marks were omitted!
So, where are your peer reviewed references that aren’t from conservative media that shows proof of an egregious amount of parents or others forcing their girls to bind themselves. True, Walt Disney insisted on haircuts, etc., but he did not insist on behavior conforming (i.e. can’t be gay, or jewish, or Catholic, etc.). It’s presumptive to assume he would make such a rule, one can only guess. Had he truly strong feelings on the topic, he might have written in such rules while alive. Parents teaching their kids about sexuality – it’s a great concept, save for a few points: 1) Parents want their kids to be like them, with no deviation, and are rather insistent, depending on the culture, that their children be exactly that, 2) too many parents are afraid or reluctant to speak honestly with their kids about sex (yes, even the basics!). Too many use old wives’ tales as truths (like masterbating makes you crazy with hairy palms, etc). As a high school teacher, I am AMAZED at how many girls totally ill informed, and as a result, make crucial decisions about their own sexual behavior (and yes, as you may remember from your own youth, there is some kind of exploratory behavior going on) without benefit of facts, and regrettably, dads are not teaching their young boys about such things as well, so boys take advantage of the girls naivete. How many actually believe that anal sex keeps one a virgin? (Many!!).
Tommy Kirk was fired from Disney after getting caught having sex with a 15 year old boy. (He was 21.)
me– Tommy Kirk– a pedophile? Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, and all the original, adorable Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers, represented an all-American image, and great role models. Tommy Kirk was in lots of all-family Disney movies– our family saw them all. He must have been about age 21, in those wonderful Disney movies– and was a criminal pedophile, at that same time? I just looked up his case on Google– and it is all true. I still know by heart, the original Mickey Mouse Club theme song. Is nothing sacred? Poor Walt Disney.
No parent wants his child to be LGBT. It’s always a disappointment to a parent when a child outs as LGBT. Always.
Some teen relatives went to a Christian school that had an excellent sex ed class. Parents could inspect all books used, what was taught and could opt their child out if wanted. Contraception was discussed, but failure rates and dangers of such (incurable STDs) were told to students, all without going into lurid detail or encouraging immoral behavior. Contrary to what many think, there are Buddhist websites and websites of other religions that follow such things as the “Eight-fold Path” which discourage the same sexual sins as observant Jews and Christians. Sikhs are supposed to be monogamous.
Perhaps the question isn’t based on the metrics but is based on the premise itself
https://newmansociety.org/nontraditional-families-catholic-schools/
And your point is? Do you not think Disney employees are caught having sex with 15 year old girls? Of course it should not happen and they should be fired for it. But picking out one violation to make a point is absurd.
Disney has always wanted all of their stars to have a squeaky clean image.
Let’s get back to basics. LGBT should never have been normalized nor mainstreamed. It’s deviant, and any society that accepts or promotes it is deviant and will decline. Look around. It’s happening right in front of your faces. It’s inevitable, like a law of social evolution.
Sounds like a Russian bot to me.
Just because Putin was wrong to invade doesn’t mean he’s wrong about opposing the spread of LGBT propaganda in Russia. He’s right to oppose LGBT because opposing LGBT is objectively right.
Um ok. But do you understand the difference between a dictator opposing lgbt people in his own country and bombing maternity hospitals in a completely different country because he thinks there might be gay kids born there so he has to bomb them all?
You think they bombed a maternity hospital because they thought the babies might be gay?
Um…..
I wish the church would do something to muzzle Fr. James Martin. We need something like that Florida law in the church.
How about don’t say gay, Fr. Martin, S.J.?
I know how the LGBT community feels- many religious people felt the same way when the liberals took prayer out of school and patriotic people when liberals took the pledge of allegiance out of the schools. Do unto others as you would have them due to you!
A long time ago, as a church volunteer, I saw kids who were ashamed of one or both parents, for a number of reasons– drug or alcohol addiction, drug convictions and imprisonment, homosexual activity, adultery, mom and child abuse, etc. etc. They all were receiving counseling. I once talked to a college-age girl who was adopted as a baby, by a Christian couple. Her adoptive mom was a head nurse at a hospital. She said she was having a rough time, because she had found out that her birth parents were unmarried dope addicts, who had to give her up for adoption. She said it made her feel terribly “inferior,” to know that she was born out-of-wedlock, to two unmarried dope addicts! She said that although no one outside of her adoptive family knew this information, it made her feel extremely worthless and stigmatized, and she was seeing a psychiatrist. Kids suffer greatly, when their parents sin. It doesn’t matter if others do not know, or are not bothered at all by their situation. Children may stigmatize themselves, and feel just awful, if a parent commits terrible sins. Parents need to lead good lives, teach good manners and good Christian morals, and be good role models for their children! They need to be moms and dads that their children can be comfortable with, depend on, look up to, and be proud of.