⁣Disney production coordinator Allen March says his team is committed to “exploring queer stories” and has created a “tracker” to make sure they are creating enough “gender nonconforming characters,” “canonical trans characters,” and “canonical bisexual characters.”
TRANSCRIPT:
I’ve had the privilege of working with the Moon Girl team for the last two years. They’ve been really open to exploring queer stories. I’m on the production side, and part of the work that I feel like I can put in is making sure that – we take place in modern-day New York, so making sure that that’s an accurate reflection of New York. So, I put together a tracker of our background characters to make sure that we have the full breadth of expression. We got into a very similar conversation, Karey. “All of our gender-nonconforming characters are in the background. So, it’s not just a numbers game of how many LGBTQ+ characters you have. The more centered a story is on a character, the more nuanced you get to get into their story. Especially with trans characters. You can’t see if someone is trans. There’s not one way to look trans. So, the only kind of way to have these canonical trans characters, canonical bisexual characters, is to give them stories where they can be their whole selves.”

⁣Disney corporate president Karey Burke says, he supports having “many, many, many
LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and wants a minimum of 50 percent of characters to be
LGBTQIA and racial minorities.
TRANSCRIPT:
“I’m here as a mother to two queer children actually, one transgender child and one pansexual
child, and also as a leader.” Burke said in the video. “That was the thing that really got me
because I have heard so much from so many of my colleagues over the course of the last couple
weeks.” In open forums, and through emails and Phone conversations. I feel a responsibility to
speak, not just for myself but for them. We had an open forum last week at 20 th where, again,
the home of really incredible groundbreaking LGBTQIA stories over the years, where one of our
execs stood up and said, “You know, we only had a handful of queer leads in our content,” and I
went, “what? That can’t be true!” And I realized, “Oh. It actually is true.” 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 and not have to be about gay stories. That’s been
very eye-opening for me. I can tell you, it’s something that I feel, perhaps had this moment not
happened, I as a leader and as well as my colleagues would not have focused on. Going
forward, I certainly will be more so. I know that we will be, and I hope this is a moment where
shot, the 50 percent – — the tears, sorry are coming — we just won’t allow each other to go
backwards.

⁣
Executive Producer Latoya Raveneau says her team has implemented a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and is regularly “adding queerness” to children’s programming.
TRANSCRIPT:
I love Disney’s content. I grew up watching all of the classics. They have been a huge, informative part of my life. But the same time, I had worked at small studios for most of my career and I had heard whispers that “They won’t let you show this a Disney show.” And I’m like “Okay.” So, I was little sus [SIC: suspicious] when I started. But then my experience was bafflingly the opposite of what I had heard on my little pocket of Proud Family Disney TVA. The showrunners were super welcome. Meredith Roberts and the leadership over there have been so welcoming to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda. So I felt like maybe it was that in the past, but I guess something has happened, cause they have turned it around and are going hard. And all of that momentum and that sense that I don’t have to be afraid to have these two different characters kiss in the background. I was basically adding queerness. If you see anything queer in the show… no one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me.

Categories:News

⁣Disney’s activism partner Nadine Smith of Equality Florida tells LGBTQ employees that
@GovRonDeSantis and @ChristinaPushaw want to “erase you, “criminalize your existence,” and “take your kids”—a wild conspiracy theory that Republicans want to kidnap gay people’s children.
TRANSCRIPT: You can look at the comments, you can look at the coverage, but the context is also who is pushing it, what their record is, and what the history is in Florida. You can go back to the 50’s and the Johns committee where the legislature put together a task force whose whole job was to root civil rights workers and any homosexuals out of the universities. And destroyed lives – literally people committed suicide behind the relentless attacked. And then you have Anita Bryant and the Save our Children campaign, which is premised on the are the same ideas that undergird this bill. And because of her campaign that equated being gay with being a child predator, she was able to ban gay people from being able to adopt, marriage ban, and she took that nationwide. And when we react to this, we’re reacting from the pain we experienced of being isolated and stigmatized in school. But we’re also reacting from the reality that when they can erase you and criminalize your existence and demonize who you are, the next step is to criminalize you and take your kids. We’re already seeing that in Texas. The slippery slope between these ugly messages emanating from legislative leaders in our state and amplified by our governor, whose spokesperson immediately began calling everyone who opposed this bill “Groomers” aka pedophiles…

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