A little off-topic, maybe, but I’m appalled by the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric increasingly coming from far-right Republicans. You might have thought that gay people were finally accepted in the U.S. and now have equal rights, but that’s far from the truth. The Republican-evangelical cabal has never been happy about accepting gay people. They saw the Supreme Court allow same-sex marriage, they saw gay people positively portrayed on T.V. and in movies, they saw large percentages of straight Americans embracing their gay sons, daughters, parents, friends, co-workers—and they vowed to undo all of it.
The latest and most egregious example is, of course, in Florida, with DeSantis’s wicked Don’t Say Gay law. I was reading about this online and got sidetracked into a separate (but related) story about how the Walt Disney Company got into trouble after their CEO, Bob Chapek, refused to denounce the new law. Disney, of course, is a huge player in Florida’s politics and economy; the company also has a huge number of LGBTQ employees. According to Yahoo entertainment, they wrote a letter to Chapek complaining about his equivocation, and apparently as a result of that letter, Pixar (which Disney owns) restored a scene in the upcoming Toy Story sequel in which two women romantically kiss each other. The scene had been cut (presumably on Disney’s orders), but the blowback from the employees was so severe, Chapek realized he had to do something to calm them down.
Then I read through the comments on the Yahoo article, and was thoroughly disgusted. The haters are still out there, swarming around like wasps, determined to crush gay rights whenever, wherever and however they can. Here are some examples:
I will never understand why companies constantly cave to the tiniest minority with the loudest voices in this country.
Yep, done with Disney, now more than ever before. They have gone so far from their roots, it is tragic. It's not about building character and teaching morality ...just more woke propaganda with each kid movie and I've finally had enough of it.
It's nonsense but what do we expect. We all need to as Parents and Grown Adults to keep our kids away from this being forced on upon them. Our Government and MSM wants to destroy us from within.
It's all about the woke agenda - where does this end?
Why does a children's movie have to show sexual preference? Totally passing on taking kids from our family. Stop jamming other lifestyles on others and perverting our children! Bye Disney!
Hopefully Disney will remove the scenes in post production! Don’t need to see this in a Disney movie EVER.
God!! This is sickening! Why do children have to be fed this woke propaganda? This is abuse, when will they understand? They are creating adults with horrific mental issues. This is the generation of tomorrow. This is so sad!
I guess I'll download another Dismal film and edit it the way it needs to be done. The LGBTCP+ crowd needs to disappear.
All these comments are disgusting, but the last one strikes me as coming perilously close to advocating the murder of “The LGBTCP” crowd (I assume that the writer included “CP” to refer to “Communist Party.” Clever!).
What is it about these people that they can’t live and let live? My theory is that they’re all Republicans and all members of various rightwing Christian groups who choose to believe that the Bible is inerrant. Never mind that the same Bible recommends the death penalty for adultery, for striking one’s parent, for cursing one’s parent, for witchcraft and divination, for all kinds of Sabbath violations, for blasphemy, for harlotry, for refusing to accept a court ruling, for a women who is not a virgin at the time of her marriage, and on and on. If humans really were killed for every death penalty listed in the Bible, the population of the Earth would be zero.
As stupid as these “violations” are, these rightwing religious extremists choose to ignore all of them except—you guessed it—the injunctions against homosexuality. This is Cafeteria Christianity, where you pick and choose the laws you want and the ones you wish to ignore. (I don’t mean to let rightwing Islam and Judaism off the hook. They have their homophobic fanatics, too.)
One reason I cannot embrace the Republican Party is because they encourage these hateful, ignorant people. Every American concerned with human rights should be protesting what DeSantis and Florida are doing. No American should go to Florida for any reason until they repeal this vicious, stupid law. We should wreck Florida’s economy, the same as we’re wrecking Russia’s, and for the same reason: violence against humanity. The fact that the Republican Party steadfastly refuses to do so only shows how far they’ve drifted from decency.
For all my criticism of the woke politicians in Oakland, we stand together in solidarity on this issue of LGBTQ rights.
Steve Heimoff