But how does Disney feel about your other rights as a parent?
The company that once brought us Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy has declared a sort of unholy war on the new Parental Rights In Education bill in Florida.
Have you heard it called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill? About how oppressive and harmful and hateful it is?
You know why?
Here’s the money quote:
Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
Shocking, huh?
The idea seems to be that kids 5, 6, 7, and 8 — who have no pressing need for information about human sexuality — be allowed to be kids while at school. It also seems to assume that if parents want their kids of that age to have such information, that the parents be the ones who tell them.
The theory seems to be that children belong to their parents, not their school.
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 Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that. We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.
A company that made its name by making programming for children apparently thinks that parents are irrelevant.
These would presumably be the same parents who buy Disney products.
If you were a Disney stockholder and able to attend a shareholders meeting, perhaps you might consider asking the following question:
Under what theory should a publicly traded company that depends on the good will of parents be offending the vast majority of parents by telling them they have no right to determine what their young children do and do not see?
Now, you may be thinking that there are other portions of the Florida bill that are objectionable. To that end, we encourage you to read the entire seven-page bill, as we did.
Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:
“A school district may not adopt procedures or student support forms that prohibit school district personnel from notifying a parent about his or her student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being, or a change in related services or monitoring, or that encourage or have the effect of encouraging a student to withhold from a parent such information. School district personnel may not discourage or prohibit parental notification of and involvement in critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.”
Translation: Can’t keep parents in the dark and try to make profoundly personal decisions about their kids behind their back.
“At the beginning of the school year, each school district shall notify parents of each healthcare service offered at their student’s school and the option to withhold consent or decline any specific service.”
Translation: Can’t give kids condoms or other contraceptives without first letting parents know you might do that and letting parents decline those “services” in advance.
“Before administering a student well-being questionnaire or health screening form to a student in kindergarten through grade 3, the school district must provide the questionnaire or health screening form to the parent and obtain the permission of the parent.”
Translation: Can’t try a back-door approach to promote harmful and bizarre theories on human sexuality and race – like what happens from time to time around here – without notifying parents first and getting their permission.
Frankly, this bill not only has the right idea … it shouldn’t even properly be called controversial. It doesn’t set forth a particular view of human sexuality. It doesn’t say, for instance, that active homosexuality leads to a life of unhappiness by divorcing sex acts from their purposes. It doesn’t say that identifying with a gender other than the one that corresponds to a person’s biological sex renders a person at war with his own body and makes existing emotional problems worse.
If a bill said that, we’d understand the conflict.
Instead, this bill insists that for children young enough to still be shaky riding a small bicycle with one hand, parents decide what they learn about deeply personal and moral matters that do not pertain to reading, writing, or ‘rithmetic.
Disney’s malarkey about how the Florida bill somehow undermines the “rights and safety” of the company’s homosexual and transgender employees is laughable. Most of them, of course, are childless. Those that have children can tell them whatever they want.
And nobody has a right to tell your children something about human sexuality you don’t believe in or that you don’t think is appropriate for their particular stage of development.
The takeaway is that Disney has something in common with certain public school “educators” obsessed with imposing their fringe theories about human sexuality on children:
They both think they can do a better job raising your child than you can.
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