The Walt Disney Company's fight against Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act reveals its commitment to a "not-at-all-secret gay agenda," according to Christopher Rufo, of City Journal magazine.
Rufo tweeted on Tuesday that he had obtained video from inside Disney's meeting about the new Florida law, during which Executive Producer Latoya Raveneau claims to be regularly "adding queerness" to the company's children's programming.
"Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda," Raveneau said. "I don't have to be afraid to have these two characters kiss. Wherever I could, just basically adding queerness. No one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me."
On Monday, Disney issued a statement hours after Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the parental rights legislation, saying that the 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"Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that," Disney said.
The new Florida law expands parental education rights and bans classroom instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade.
DeSantis has said that he won't be swayed by media, business, or celebrity opinions about the new law.
"We will continue to recognize that in the state of Florida parents have a fundamental role in the education, healthcare and well-being of their children," DeSantis said in a video posted to his official Twitter account Monday. "We will not move from that. I don't care what corporate media outlets say, I don't care what Hollywood says, I don't care what big corporations say. Here I stand — I'm not backing down."
According to the Washington Examiner, Disney CEO Bob Chapek stopped the company's political donations in Florida on March 11 and apologized for the company's initial refusal to take a stand against the bill.
The company's storied Disney World Resort is located in Orlando, Florida, and Disney employs more than 60,000 people in the state, making it the largest employer in central Florida, according to the Orlando Business Journal.
In another apparent inside video posted to Rufo's Twitter account, Disney corporate President Karey Burke said, "I'm here as a mother of two queer children actually — one transgender child and one pansexual child."
"We have many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories, and yet we don't have enough leads and narratives in which gay characters just get to be characters," she said.
It was not immediately clear if Burke spoke at the same meeting as Raveneau.
Rufo says he is "fighting against critical race theory through investigative reporting, policy advocacy, and legal warfare" in his Twitter bio.
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