A top Disney executive in charge of content has promised that at least half of the characters in its productions will be LGBTIA or minority by the end of the year, admitting that the company has a ‘gay agenda’
The term LGBTQIA stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit, asexual, and ally.
During a staff meeting on Florida’s recent enactment of the Parental Rights in Education bill, an executive producer at Disney said she was advancing a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” to insert queerness into children’s animation/cartoon productions.
Latoya Raveneau, executive producer for Disney Television Animation, talked about how the studio’s treatment of her progressive ideas defied her negative expectations of the company, in a video obtained by journalist Christopher Rufo.
Instead of rejecting her pitches for LGBTQ-friendly Easter eggs, Disney gladly accepted and included them, she claimed.
“In my little pocket of Proud Family Disney TVA, the showrunners were super welcoming . . . to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” she said.
“Maybe it was that way in the past, but I guess something must have happened . . . and then like all that momentum that I felt, that sense of ‘I don’t have to be afraid to have these two characters kiss in the background.’ I was just, wherever I could, adding queerness. . . . No one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me.”
She said that when she joined, she felt Disney would try to keep LGBTQ elements out of content for younger audiences, but she was pleasantly surprised by the company’s acceptance.
“I love Disney’s content. I grew up watching all of the classics. They have been a huge informative part of my life, but at the same time, I worked at small studios most of my career, and I’d heard whispers. I’d heard things like, ‘They won’t let you show this in a Disney show.’ So I was a little sus when I started, but then my experience was bafflingly the opposite of what I had heard,” she said.
Also, Disney’s diversity and inclusion chief Vivain Ware said that they no longer address the visitors as ‘ladies and gentleman, boys and girls,’ they now say ‘Dreamers of all ages’
Meanwhile, the animation and live-action movie company announced that it would increase the number of gay characters in its films.
‘I have heard so much from so many of my colleagues over the past few weeks in open forums, through emails and phone conversations,’ Burke said. ‘I feel a responsibility to speak not just for my self but also for [my kids].’
She defended 20th Century Fox as ‘the home of really incredible, groundbreaking LGBTQIA stories over the years.’
Disney has added a gay kiss in its upcoming Toy Story spinoff amid the criticism. Hawthorne a character in the film Lightyear, has a relationship with another female character in the film.
Raveneau’s leaked comments came out on Tuesday, March 29, the day after Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill by critics, which prohibits the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation to children in kindergarten through third grade.
Disney’s leadership condemned the legislation and attempted to lobby DeSantis to kill it, but he refused to change his principles..
A group of California Disney employees staged a walkout last week to protest the measure, wearing rainbow colors, holding signs with pro-LGBTQ slogans, and shouting, “Say Gay,” as they marched down the street.
Sanctis in response slammed the company for its hypocrisy in pushing domestic social-justice causes while conducting business in China with the blessing of the Chinese Communist Party, a regime notorious for human-rights abuses relating to the Uyghur Muslims, Hong Kong, Tibet, etc.