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The Southern Baptist Convention's resolution to "encourage Southern Baptists to refrain from patronizing any company that promotes immoral ideologies and practices" struck a noisy chord. Because the Disney Company was named in the resolution, numerous questioners have asked: "Why Disney?" Though Disney hasn't said much, when it has responded, it has been to accuse Southern Baptists of taking an "extreme" and "foolish" position, stating our concerns are "inappropriate."
Disney claims to produce more wholesome family entertainment than any other entertainment company. But the reality is that Disney also distributes other "entertainment" material to which millions of decent people object, materials contributing to the moral erosion scarring our national landscape. When Disney whispers, "Just trust us," it doesn't exempt itself from the criticisms of those concerned about this erosion. Half the American population, according to a recent USA Today Weekend poll, does not trust Disney and believes they ought to be boycotted.
I recently ran across this article by David Miller, and thought you ought to see it. It gives a plain answer to the question, "Why Disney?"
Morris H. Chapman,
President and Chief Executive Office, Executive Committee
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The Freedom Club Editor's note: The Disney Company has the potential to do much good, and it has. Likewise, Disney also has the power to do enormous harm — and it has.
Recently, the Southern Baptist Convention called for a boycott on Disney products and subsidiaries. Because of Disney's family-safe reputation, we asked David Miller, director of the American Family Association of Tarrant County, Tex., to provide Freedom Club members with a list of reasons to avoid Disney, according to national AFA research. He gave us many more than we could print here.
Children's Animated Movies
1 In Pocahontas, Disney censored the historical fact that the heroine in the story converted from paganism to Christianity. Instead, the film glorified pagan earth-worship.
Other Movies
2 Disney signed Martin Scorsese, the director of The Last Temptation of Christ, Casino, Taxi Driver, and many other hard-edged films to a four-year-contract. Daily Variety, 1/30/96
3 Disney hired Victor Salva, a convicted child molester, to direct its movie Powder. When Salva's victim, Nathan Winters (now twenty), publicized the hiring, some of the police officers who investigated the 1987 molestation were incredulous that Salva was working again as a movie director. "It just blows me away," said Officer Gary Primavera. "He has serious signs of being a pedophile." One Disney official, John Dreyer, refused to respond to Winter's demand that Disney fire Salva, saying, "What's the point, other than you want to make headlines?" That's compassion for you. Washington Times, 10/25/95
4 Disney considers buying Ripe, a movie about the deflowering of fourteen-year-old twins. Newsweek, 2/12/96
5 Disney hired Kevin Smith to produce two movies: Dogma, which attacks Christianity by asserting that Christian beliefs are little more than mythology, and Chasing Amy about a man's pursuit of a lesbian. Daily Variety, 11/3/95
6 Mark Gill, the president of Disney-owned Miramax admitted that his company thrives on racy, often violent, promotion for its movies. Daily Variety, 9/13/95
7 Disney-owned Miramax released the homosexual movie, Lie Down with Dogs. Daily Variety, 5/16/95
8 The Advocate (Miramax) is filled with nudity. The movie was rated NC-17 (formerly the X rating) but on appeal (and after cutting out a twelve-second sex scene), it was given an R. Daily Variety, 8/17/94
9 Pulp Fiction (Miramax) is a seedy, hyper-violent movie starring John Travolta. It had an NC-17 rating before editing gave it an R rating. Entertainment Weekly, 6/10/94; Daily Variety, 6/15/94
10 Kids (Miramax) was described by Variety magazine as "one of the most controversial American movies ever made." According to Newsweek, the film follows a number of barely pubescent-looking boys and girls around New York City as they smoke pot, bait gays, beat a black man, and engage in graphic sex. Under pressure Miramax formed an independent company to market and distribute the pornographic movie. Daily Variety, 1/27/95; Newsweek, 2/20/95; Wall Street Journal, 3/30/95; Associated Press, 6/29/95
11 Priest (Miramax) is a pro-homosexual movie which depicts five Catholic priests as perverts and blames their perversion on Church teachings. One priest is a homosexual; a second an adulterer; a third an alcoholic; a fourth demented; and the fifth just plain mean and vicious. The Advocate, 4/4/95, 4/18/95; Family Issues Alert, 3/30/95
12 Chicks in White Satin (Hollywood Pictures) is a film about a lesbian couple who decide on a semitraditional "commitment celebration." Glamour, 8/9/94
13 Jefferson in Paris (Disney backed) spreads the smear (initiated by his political rivals, but discounted by historians) that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by a thirteen-year-old slave girl. Insight, 12/5/94
Television, Children, and Family Values
14 Disney recently bought Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion. On March 19, ABC aired a Dana Carvey Show program which featured jokes and laughter about alcohol abuse and cocaine addiction. The same show had Carvey portray George Washington using cocaine and Ben Franklin in bed with another man. The same program had a cartoon skit entitled "The Ambiguously Gay Duo" in which two Superman-style heroes are homosexual lovers and drive a super car shaped like male genitalia. Finally, a "Celebrity Bloopers" spoof featured seventeen uses of the F-word (bleeped out, of course; but its intent was clear).
15 For the 1995 Christmas season, Disney dropped its seventeen-year-old "Glory and Pageantry of Christmas" display (one of Disney's few concessions to the fact that Christmas is Christian) near Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and replaced it with "Tropical Santa."
People, Policies, and the Homosexual Agenda
16 Disney helped underwrite the 1993 Hollywood benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The Press Enterprise, 12/28/93
17 Disney hired avowed lesbian Lauren Lloyd for the specific purpose of developing female and lesbian movies. OUT magazine, a homosexual publication, praised Disney: "Like it or not, lesbians are not yet chic entertainment attractions for a lot of America. With Lloyd and Disney on our side, though, anything is possible." OUT, 11/94
18 According to monitoring by American Family Association, Disney has been one of the top sponsors of pro-homosexual TV programming.
19 In the May, 1995, issue of Buzz magazine, contributing editor Steven Gaines writes, in an article entitled "Disney Comes Out of the Closet," that Disney has the "largest lesbian and gay employees organization in the entertainment industry."
20 In June, the company hosts the annual "Gay and Lesbian Day at Walt Disney World." In a cartoon, Disney allowed the homosexual organizers to portray Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck as homosexual lovers; and Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck as lesbians.
21 Disney has extended company health benefits to live-in partners of homosexual employees (the policy does not cover unmarried heterosexual couples who live together). The Orlando Sentinel, 10/7/95; USA Today, 10/19/95; Daily Variety, 10/9/95
22 Hyperion Press, a Disney-owned subsidiary, has published Lettin' It All Hang Out, the autobiography of RuPaul, a well-known "drag queen" (transvestite) entertainer.
23 Hyperion Press also published Growing Up Gay. Written by three homosexual comedians, the book is written to encourage "gay" young people.
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To contact the Walt Disney Company, write or call:
Michael Eisner, Chairman
500 South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521
(818) 560-1000
This article is adapted and reprinted from The Freedom Club Report, a monthly newsletter of Point of View radio talk show.
Alabama and the Disney Boycott
It appears that those with the most money and education in Alabama are also those most likely to take action to avoid Disney. According to a report in The Alabama Baptist, August 28, a survey by the Southern Opinion Research poll shows that younger, more educated adults with higher incomes — the population most likely to spend money on Disney — are the more likely to avoid the Disney Company. About fifty-one percent of those less than forty years of age, as well as fifty-one percent of those with more than a high school education, say they are avoiding Disney products. However, two-thirds of those with less than a high school diploma say they do not support the boycott.