I have a confession to make. While a part of the Christian world is pushing a boycott of Disney Corporation’s remake of Beauty and the Beast, my wife and I spent today at Disneyland, and we didn’t even have our grandchildren with us. Why? Because we wanted to have a day away from all the constant reminders of perversion in our society in a place that is absolutely 100% affirming of heterosexual normalcy. Disneyland’s slogan is “The Happiest Place on Earth,” but in reality it should be called the “The Straightest Place on Earth.” There is literally no other large commercial venture on this planet so utterly family oriented, or so packed with families wanting to be together there that it sometimes produces pedestrian traffic jams in the park.
Disney Corporation’s cash cow would in fact quickly run dry if its executives ever dared to convert Walt Disney’s family friendly life’s work to reflect leftist sexual values. The proof is in the pudding. There is not now, nor will there ever be a line of 75 little girls waiting in the hot sun in princess costumes to get their picture with Bruce “Kaitlyn” Jenner, as there were today to meet Princess Arial. Thank God that after more than five decades of anti-family leftist control of American culture, little girls still want to be like Cinderella and little boys still want to be like Peter Pan. There may be a growing number of troubled children and teens falling into the clutches of the LGBT “community” – a huge problem – but in the big picture the percentages are still minuscule, and they are starkly contrasted with the vast numbers of kids growing up to be just as heterosexually normal as Mom and Dad.
Knowing their own business model, why would high-ranking Disney officials allow the leftist activists among them to diddle around the edges of Walt Disney’s legacy with stupid little pro-“gay” symbolic gestures?
Christian leaders have often asserted that it’s because they can’t help themselves. They’re simply compelled to push the LGBT envelope at all costs. That may be true at their subsidy, ABC, which just had yet another overtly homosexual television program crash and burn. But it’s not true at Disneyland or Disney Studios, no matter how many employees may have sexual dysfunction issues.
No, the truth is ironically a backhanded affirmation of normalcy. The Disney Execs are deliberately and cynically exploiting the “freak-show” nature of LGBT culture. They’re trying to create some controversy, because that’s what attracts public attention – the golden ticket of marketing – without overly agitating the average American Mom. It’s a delicate balancing act but they’ve worked out a pretty successful formula: provoking fundamentalist Christians like me into reacting to things that the majority of secular and nominally Christian people will think are not all that bad. And like fish we usually rise to the bait – launching yet another boycott with almost zero chance of success; marginalizing ourselves in the eyes of the majority who might agree to a point on the larger principle, but not enough to inconvenience themselves; and handing another marketing victory to our cultural adversaries.
I’m not against boycotts per se, and have participated in many of them. I understand and share the desire not to enrich any company that’s using the profits from my purchases in a way that undermines my values in the society. But when a strategy isn’t working, or when, as with Disney, our adversaries have learned how to exploit our predictable tactics to their financial advantage, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
Beauty and the Beast is enjoying a massive opening weekend as well it should as one of the greatest heterosexual love stories of all time – not because of any incidental “gay” character, but in spite of it. Not only is the heroine of the story the very epitome of feminine sweetness and nurturing compassion, and the hero the epitome of masculine strength and virtue, but their relationship reenacts the essential truth of civilization: that the role of healthy, normal women is to civilize men and steer their masculinity away from animalistic selfishness toward the care and protection of their family.
The social commentator George Gilder noted this in his landmark book “Men and Marriage” (1995) “The crucial process of civilization is the subordination of male sexual impulses and biology to the long-term horizons of female sexuality. The overall sexual behavior of women in the modern world differs relatively little from the sexual life of women in primitive societies. It is male behavior which must be changed to create a civilized order….In creating civilization, women transform male lust into love; channel male wanderlust into jobs, homes, and families; link men to specific children; rear children into citizens; change hunters into fathers; divert male will to power into a drive to create.” This is the same truth in fairy tale form in Beauty and the Beast!
Disney has just released one of the most blatantly heterosexist movies of all time, and will profit enormously from it! Best of all, it is inculcating founder Walt Disney’s family-friendly values in another generation of children, who are also learning another essential truth: that the “gay” character is usually the bad guy. Why would any Christian boycott this film?
No amount of pandering to or funding of the “gay” lobby from its profits can undo Disney’s betrayal of leftist ideology here. What is more, Beauty and the Beast is just one asset in the entire treasury of pro-family films that Disney depends upon for its financial survival.
I suggest that instead of boycotting and opposing Disney, we Christians push the other direction. Let’s use the Disney collection, all of its plots, themes and characters as examples of our values in a million letters to the editor, talk show call-ins, and conversations at church, school and work. By the sheer volume of our voices, let’s make Disney publicly acknowledge how much it depends for its success on the pro-family values it’s treasury of assets projects into to the world every single day. What can they do in response? Create new “gay” versions to spite us? Not on your life.
A symbol of Christianity is the fish, but the Bible tells us that in dealing with the world we are instead to be wise as serpents. Lets stop taking the bait every time some leftist media marketer calls us posing a concerned citizen, trying to get some free publicity from our overreaction. Lets be smart for a change and force the giant to fight for us by sitting on his shoulders to shout the truths he cannot afford to deny.
