Back from another much needed Walt Disney World vacation. Guess which Mickey pin you can’t find at Walt Disney World anymore…

And no, they’re not gone because I bought every one…although it may look like that here. After the Pulse shootings they were everywhere around Walt Disney World. They had a giant sized one near the entrance to the pin trader’s hutch in Disney Springs last July, but you couldn’t find any of the pins. I figured they were just out of stock. But no, they’re not selling them anymore.

Granted, this isn’t the gay rights movement rainbow. That’s a different set of colors. I knew that when I first set eyes on one of these. It’s called the Peace Rainbow. But it’s close enough that many of us just started wearing it, particularly around Gay Days. Nobody expected Disney, in it’s nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean, relationship with its LGBT guests to actually produce a rainbow flag Mickey. But it was close enough that if you wore one, everyone pretty much knew what it meant. I wore mine back in July, after Pulse, and got a lot of sympathetic comments from the cast members.

This time around I mostly wore my Tomorrowland pin (and got some friendly comments about that too). But on my last day I wore a rainbow Mickey and as I was being checked into Epcot the security lady who went through my camera bag said “I like your pin…I have one at home”. This is how we wave to each other.

So…the reason I have so many of these is I would go to Walt Disney World and forget my rainbow Mickey and just buy a new one while I was there. They were that ubiquitous. Now that they’re not selling them anymore (I asked, and was told I might be able to find one on eBay…(sigh)) I might have some collectibles now. I’m guessing the reason is ever since Pulse and the sudden explosions of rainbow Mickey’s all over the parks the jig was up and now Disney can’t sell them anymore because…well…

And it’s not even the LGBT rainbow. Be nice if they actually did produce an actual rainbow flag Mickey. They make them for other nations and ethnic groups after all. But you can just hear people bellyaching about Disney bringing sex into a Family Friendly theme park, sexualizing Mickey, a children’s cartoon character forever ruined, if they did. That relentless dehumanization of gay people is another topic, for another day. It’s the reason why you can see images of Disney lovers everywhere in the parks, in all the shops and character meets…and they’re all exclusively opposite sex pairs. Opposite sex coupling is love. Aren’t they so adorable?  

A rainbow Mickey couldn’t be about all the colors of love. Because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.