Disney and Homophobia

Further news from Colorado Springs gay bar shooting indicates that the shooter had issues with his own sexuality, possibly. The court filing by his attorneys’ requests that the shooter be addressed as they/them and that the shooter self-identifies as non-binary.

After listening to the confusing, bizarre interviews with the shooter’s father, a former porn actor, it’s not that much of a leap to imagine that the son would presume that his dad would prefer to remember the son as a jihadist rather than a homosexual. As the history of the shooter’s life is revealed, it looks like there’s going to be a plethora of times when someone should have intervened and gotten the shooter help, but didn’t. The family is steeped in a right wing theology by all reports, so maybe inclusiveness was not part of the discussion around the dinner table.

Another place where diversity can’t be discussed is Florida, anywhere in Florida. Ron De Satan, current governor of Florida and future presidential candidate of the White Nationalist Party, has decreed that any discussion of sexual orientation is off limits. In his “don’t say gay” legislation, De Satan said teaching kindergarten-aged kids that “they can be whatever they want to be” was “inappropriate” for children. This statement is spinning a couple of unusual ways in my head.

Back in the days when the planet was still cooling and dinosaurs ruled the earth, it was a popular misconception that children were turned gay by attributes of one or the other parent. Domineering mother and shy father, “poof” gay son. Father who always wanted a son but had a daughter, “poof” gay daughter. There was blessed little concept that orientation occurred pre-birth. It had to be bad parenting, and children can be recovered from bad parenting. The fear of being deemed a “bad parent” clouded everyone’s relationships.

Now we learn from the De Satan brain trust that telling a child “they can be whatever they want to be” will be the catalyst to turning a generation of would-be insurrectionists into interior decorators. Oh my god, if only that were true.

De Satan was not happy with just picking on teachers and little children, though. He decided to throw his weight around with one of the state’s largest employers, Disney. Disney’s employees spoke up and rose up about the unfairness of the governor’s decree. Disney was faced with the hardest of corporate challenges, taking a stand. To their credit, the Disney hierarchy publicly condemned the “Don’t Say Gay” decree and then the battle was engaged.

De Satan responded by denying a tax advantage that Disney had been granted when they began construction in the swamp of the Orlando environs back in 1967. Governor De Spiteful had calculated that Disney couldn’t just pick up and move the 27,000-acre theme park. All he had to do was change the tax base for Disney and place the burden on the surrounding flaming liberal communities of Orlando. De Spiteful would show them who was boss by golly.

We can well imagine that the homeowners in central Florida affected by the tax change probably didn’t discuss their tax increase in positive terms. We can imagine that the taxpayers didn’t attribute their loss of income to their evil despotic homophobic autocratic governor. No, we can imagine where the blame will be laid. Just remember when you talk about it, “don’t say gay.”