Disney, which once dared to attack Florida Republicans for the sin of wanting to preserve kindergarteners’ innocence, is now opening a new park in a nation where homosexuality is a crime.
Hypocrisy much?
Disney announced Wednesday it would be opening its seventh park in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. “This seventh Disney theme park resort will combine Disney’s iconic stories, characters and attractions with Abu Dhabi’s vibrant culture, stunning shorelines, and breathtaking architecture,” exults the Disney press release.
Left unmentioned is that Abu Dhabi’s “vibrant culture” bans same-sex marriage, adoption of children by same-sex couples, production of or sharing of pro-LGBT material, and well, homosexual sex, according to Equaldex, which tracks countries’ laws on LGBTQ matters.
In the United Arab Emirates, “[s]ame-sex sexual activity may also be penalized under Sharia law, under which the death penalty is possible, though there is no evidence that this has been used against LGBT people,” states the Human Dignity Trust, a British-based organization that provides legal aid to bolster LGBT rights. (The U.S. embassy for the United Arab Emirates did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Equaldex and Human Dignity Trust’s analysis of its laws.)
Remember: Florida’s unfairly infamous 2022 bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” by critics, simply prevented kids in kindergarten through third grade from having planned classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity in school.
Which is, you know, a bit of far cry from having the death penalty for people having gay or lesbian sex.
Yet Disney acted like Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was some kind of persecutor of the LGBT community. Then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek said he called DeSantis “to express our disappointment and concern that if the legislation becomes law, it could be used to unfairly target gay, lesbian, non-binary and transgender kids and families.”
Bob Iger, who both preceded and succeeded Chapek as CEO, shared on X an absurd post from then President Joe Biden stating, “I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are. I have your back, and my Administration will continue to fight for the protections and safety you deserve.”
Iger responded, “I’m with the President on this! If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.”
Just to recap: This bill simply banned planned classroom teaching on gender identity and sexual orientation for kindergarteners to third graders in schools.
Compared to the United Arab Emirates, Florida is an absolute bastion of tolerance when it comes to LGBTQ matters.
So is Disney planning to build in the UAE, but also speak out against the nation’s laws?
Doesn’t appear so, as Disney communications did not respond by deadline to a press request I emailed asking them about their choice of the United Arab Emirates as the location for their seventh park given the country’s laws about LGBTQ behavior.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Disney seems to espouse one set of values in the United States and another set of values elsewhere. Disney has two parks in China, which allows partnerships, but not marriages, for same-sex couples, among other restrictions, according to Equaldex.
China’s overall human rights record is dismal. According to a 2023 State Department report, China has “[s]ignificant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; enforced disappearances by the government; torture by the government … harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention by the government including, since 2017, of more than one million Uyghurs and members of other predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps, prisons, and an additional unknown number subjected to daytime-only ‘re-education’ training; … and existence of some of the worst forms of child labor.”
But apparently none of that keeps Disney executives up at night, not the same way that someone trying not to confuse a kindergartner about her gender does.
In some ways, Disney, perhaps jolted by the blowback to its Florida stance, has tried to become less woke. In 2022, Disney released “Lightyear,” a children’s movie which featured a same-sex kiss. (The UAE banned “Lightyear,” incidentally.) That movie flopped and since then, Disney, which seems to perhaps love the profits more than the wokeness, has pivoted somewhat. A Pixar TV series set to feature a trans character was reportedly altered to remove gender identity as part of that character’s arc.
Yet two Disney shows featuring lesbian moms, “Firebuds,” and “Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures,” were nominated in January for the GLAAD Media Award for Kids and Family Programming.
Furthermore, in March, Disney shareholders rejected a proposal by the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project to end the company’s participation in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index.
“Though HRC – which Disney has a paid partnership with – claims the [Corporate Equality Index] is just a ‘benchmarking tool on corporate policies… pertinent to LGBT employees,’ in reality, it functions like a social credit score for corporations,” the proposal stated.
“The threat of a bad score is wielded against corporations to force them to do the political bidding of HRC and others (like GLSEN, the Trevor Project and GLAAD, which Disney also has paid partnerships with) that seek to sow gender confusion in children, encourage irreversible surgical procedures on confused teens, effectively eliminate girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms and roll back longstanding religious liberties.”
Disney shareholders refused to stop the company’s participation in the controversial index.
So Disney is both continuing at least some wokeness … and simultaneously expanding in a country where homosexuality is criminalized.
It doesn’t make sense—unless you realize that the highest value of Disney is getting cash, regardless of what moral compromises that entails. That type of moral hierarchy should make Disney a disappointment to both LGBTQ activists and traditional conservatives—and should certainly make Disney’s LGBTQ preaching against U.S. conservatives even more risible.
