Last year, as the Walt Disney Co. battled Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republicans in the Legislature over a parental rights’ education bill, top company executives said the quiet part out loud.
During a company Zoom call in March 2022, Karey Burke, president of Disney’s General Entertainment Content, and a self-identified mother of “one transgender child and one pansexual child,” said she favored Disney creating “many, many” LGBTQ characters.
Also on the call was Latoya Raveneau, executive producer for Disney Television Animation. She applauded Disney for being “super welcoming . . . to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda.”
Now we know how welcoming Disney was.
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PJ Media columnist Matt Margolis noted on Tuesday that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, or GLAAD, had released its annual “Studio Responsibility Index” that reports on how much LGBTQ content movie studios churn out each year.
“Of all the studios, in 2022, Disney topped them all,” Margolis wrote.
According to GLAAD, 24 of the 59 movies Disney released in 2022 met the group’s approval as “LGBTQ inclusive.”
This means that the movie must contain at least one identifiably LGBTQ character, who is not “solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The LGBTQ character must also be integral to the plot and “matter” to the gist of the film, and not have a story that is outwardly offensive by promoting stereotypes.
GLAAD also applauded Disney for “LGBTQ representation (that) in some films was groundbreaking in kids and family spaces.”
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But GLAAD also patted itself on the back.
“Over the last decade, the percentage of LGBTQ-inclusive films grew by 50 percent, or 1.5 times, in large part due to GLAAD’s annual study, alongside work with studio leadership and creatives,” President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis wrote.
“We know that the stories told in those films have been an inextricable part of a culture-shift seen and experienced by the LGBTQ community with support for LGBTQ people and acceptance at an all-time high.”
Yet Margolis noted the commercial success is not following the trend.
“That’s exactly the kind of content we all want from Disney! … said no one ever,” he wrote. “And Disney wonders why they’ve had so many flops, and why they’ve been losing billions of dollars.”
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