Florida GOP threatens Disney over pro-gay stance: What a vindictive bunch!
Looks like Mickey Mouse is too gayaccepting for the political tastes of Gov. DeSantis and Florida’s GOP leaders.
And what do fascists do when they don’t like someone’s politics?
They throw the book at them.
That’s exactly what the governor and his minions in the Florida Legislature are shamelessly threatening to do to Disney World in Orlando: punish The Happiest Place on Earth for its support of gay and transgender children’s right to be themselves, including in schools.
In my-way-or-the-highway DeSantis World, The Walt Disney Company is a “woke” corporation, a no-no for him, DeSantis complains, and Fox News echos mini-Trump’s inflammatory words like gospel across the land.
DESANTIS VS. DISNEY
All of a sudden, popular Disney World becomes the enemy, the latest target of the right, and DeSantis the knight in shining armor battling a “transgenderism in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms” that has never existed.
But disinformation is the fuel on which Sunshine State Republicans run for office.
DeSantis just won’t stand for corporations that don’t operate on his convenient political terms — and like the wound-up bully that he is, DeSantis has boots on the ground already working on a plan of attack.
Cue state Rep. Spencer Roach of Fort Myers.
Roach confirms on Twitter that, indeed, there have been two meetings among lawmakers to discuss retaliation against the company for its support of LBGTQ+ youth and criticism of the anti-gay bill disguised as parental rights in education.
“Yesterday was the 2nd meeting in a week w/ fellow legislators to discuss a repeal of the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, which allows Disney to act as its own government,” Roach tweeted Wednesday. “If Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County.”
Not very subtle, is it?
It’s explicit intimidation
— and an admission that lawmakers are conspiring to hurt the company — by legislating against the way Disney has been doing business for 51 years in Florida, like a self-run municipality.
Disney attorneys must be having a field day stockpiling social-media screenshots, right-wing media stories and videos from Fox News of DeSantis’ rants and threats in case it’s necessary to battle over the issue of a business’ right to free speech in court.
Reminder: There’s still a U.S. Constitution to obey in Florida.
Yet, here’s Floriduh’s government now in the business of blackmail, its lawmakers feeling so emboldened by their unstoppable majority in the House and Senate and by the governor’s political appointments to the bench that they don’t bother to hide their wrongdoing.
What did Disney do to offend?
Listen to its employees and issue a statement standing on the side of children and gay people being marginalized.
Albeit belatedly, Disney CEO Bob Chapek also dared to publicly criticize the “Don’t say gay” bill signed into law by DeSantis.
Taking effect July 1, the law prohibits all classroom discussion of sexual orientation in grades K-3 and enables parents to sue teachers over the issue, a slap in the face of Florida’s gay and transgender population.
‘GAY DAY’
Disney should’ve spoken up sooner on behalf of a gay community that has for years packed the Magic Kingdom every first Saturday in June for “Gay Day.” The event, which started as a grassroots show of love for the popular attraction, has expanded to other parks and become a standard for gay families in joyous red T-shirts.
With his employees angry at him for not stepping up sooner to denounce the demeaning
“Don’t say gay,” Chapek also announced that Disney would be donating $5 million to LGBTQ groups.
A private company’s gestures — and its policies of inclusion — were enough to irk the mighty Republicans, who have spent the past two legislative sessions passing bills that hurt minorities and have no appetite for different points of view or bipartisanship.
There’s only room for their rhetoric, never mind that the retaliation against Disney runs counter to the values of “freedom” that DeSantis & Co. espouse.
Guess the DeSantis’ battle cry against his COVID safety-minded Democratic opponents — “Florida is a free state!” — doesn’t apply to Disney.
Freedom to become infected and die, yes, but not enough freedom permitted for a CEO to make his employees and customers feel valued.
Unbridled regulation is Republican lawmakers’ modus operandi these days, as they proved once more during this legislative session devoted to ruling over wombs, gayness and Blackness.
All gloat, all Fox News soundbite, but no fortitude to withstand the truly free.
Theirs is a small world after all.