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.

Posted to the NBC News website…which says something about how far we’ve come…

More than 100 features and short films are being shown at NewFest: New York’s LGBT Film Festival this year, and the slate includes the largest offering of international films in the festival’s history.

“More filmmakers around the world are interested in telling LGBTQ stories, and they’re doing them better than ever,” NewFest Executive Director Robert Kushner told NBC OUT.

NBC OUT…wow.  Back when I was a gay teenager I would never have expected to read  those words on a network TV publication.

18 countries are represented in the film fest. The article singles out 11 films to watch. This one…immediately caught my attention…

Esteros (Argentina/Brazil)

Would you risk it all for a second shot at love? That’s what “Esteros” explores. In the film, Matías and Jerónimo reunite more than a decade after their attraction first became apparent as teenagers. When family judgment got in the way, Matías was forced to move to Brazil. And while Matías has now returned to their hometown in Argentina, he’s brought his girlfriend along with him and complicated matters further. The men’s chemistry, however, remains. But whereas Jerónimo is a confident and out gay man, Matías has barely allowed himself to question his sexuality…

Yeah…there are elements to this story obviously that punch me right in the gut. But on the other hand it helps more than I can say: It means I am not alone in having this sort of experience. It’s real easy these days to be both delighted at how far we’ve come, and bitter that the point of all of it shot right past me…and so many others of my generation. This film looks like it speaks to that. I’ll be looking for it on the DVD circuit.

Feeling at tad abused by Mercedes-Benz USA today. I’ll probably bitch about it later. No…I will almost certainly bitch about it later.

In the meantime…

“Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

“Oh, we use only the finest juicy chunks of fresh Cornish Ram’s bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds, whipped into a fondue, and garnished with lark’s vomit.”

Forrest Gump – Monty Python crossover…

Jim Burroway, of Box Turtle Bulletin, posted his reaction on Facebook to something that’s bugged me long before the current Trump dump…

That. All those criticisms of Trump from his former supporters that start out as a husband and a father… blah blah blah. In one sense I can see how horrified the one who has a daughter of their own might suddenly feel hearing Trump’s casual off-handed just talking among the boys leering predatory attitude toward women. On the other it’s pretty hard to understand how anyone could have been that oblivious. I’m a gay man. I have no children of my own, no daughter. I had no girlfriend. I will have no wife. I don’t need any of these, and neither did you, to see Donald Trump for what he was and be disgusted. But be honest; are you really shocked or is this something more like the feeling of a guilty conscience tapping you on the shoulder? Donald Trump’s character is a whole cloth of ego and contempt, greed and malice. If you didn’t notice, it’s because you were excusing it. Perhaps because you recognized some of it in yourself.

Maybe it was the racism. So uncouth where yours is genteel, and perhaps just ashamed of itself enough to make you think yourself the better man but not enough to make you actually try to see yourself in a black man’s face. Perhaps it was his xenophobia. So blatant where yours is more diplomatic. Your own grandparents were immigrants after all, but they were from a more civilized country. Perhaps it was his sexism. So vulgar compared to your mannerly chauvinism. Real men treat the weaker sex with respect. Whatever it was, you made excuses for Trump, because you made them for yourself. But that does not make you the better man. It is making you little by little, step by step, more like him.

Now suddenly it hits home. But you need to understand this: When he was talking about the black man, the brown man, the muslem, the gay man, the Other, he was talking about your wife. When he was inciting violence at his rallies, he was inciting it against your daughter. The predator does not play favorites. We are all loot. When you gave him your support despite everything you could plainly see about the man within, you gave him permission to grope your wife and daughter. If he finds them attractive.

Take a good hard look at what you will become if you don’t stop making excuses. Because the day is coming when you will be making those excuses for what a government run by Trumps will do to you, your family, and everything you ever held dear. And you will help them do it. And you will say afterwards that you didn’t know, still making excuses that nobody believes because how could you not. Never doubt it, there is where you are headed. Turn away. Now. While you can still be shocked by what he does.