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I never became a member…even at that tender age I wasn’t much of a joiner…but I watched what Walt Disney put on my TV screen regularly. \u00a0 Mostly it was for this…<\/p>\n
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And this…<\/p>\n
\n His vision of the future was a big part of my kidhood dreams. \u00a0 I wanted to be there, to grow up into that world where a great big beautiful tomorrow was shining at the end of every day. \u00a0 Somewhere along the line I stopped dreaming it. \u00a0 Somewhere past adolescence, somewhere after the country as a whole, tired of the war in Vietnam, tired of the race riots, fatigued by so much inter generational conflict, lost interest in the frontier of space, so terribly soon after we’d just put our footsteps on the moon.<\/p>\n Though I never stopped dreaming about it, I stopped believing in Disney’s great big beautiful tomorrow. \u00a0 I put it down to fantasy…a beautiful story I was told as a kid that I wanted to believe in, but would never happen. \u00a0 The world just didn’t work that way. \u00a0 But I think there was something else that was missing from that dream. \u00a0 Something that, had I seen it, might have made me hold onto it for a little longer…maybe even leave childhood behind with a vow to work a little harder to make it real.<\/p>\n That something, was me. \u00a0 I was missing from that future. \u00a0 And so were a lot of other kids just like me.<\/p>\n In the original \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Flintstones’ series, the only characters of color to appear were natives of Africa who participated in a cave scout jamboree. Worse yet, far off into the distant future, on \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Jetsons,’ the universe seemed completely dominated by white people as well.<\/p>\n These were just signs of the times and while toon tones began changing in the 1970s, it’s almost blasphemous nowadays to have a television show that doesn’t include diversity, often to a point where it almost just seems forced.<\/p>\n So at four decades post-Stonewall and more than a decade into the age of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAfter Ellen,’ it wouldn’t be unnatural for one to wonder just where The Walt Disney Company draws the line at diversity. In all fairness, the company has teetered on the issue, having both progressive human resources policies for same-sex couples (which incited the infamous and rather seemingly innocuous Southern Baptist boycott) as well as just recently relenting on allowing same-sex commitment ceremonies at the theme park resorts under public pressure.<\/p>\n So where exactly does Disney draw the line when it comes to acceptance of gays in \u00e2\u20ac\u02dceveryday life’?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well you already know the answer. \u00a0 Yes, Disney has been very progressive when compared to other media and entertainment companies. \u00a0 Behind the stage. \u00a0 On it…well we’re all still in the closet. \u00a0 And if we’re invisible on stage, we’re also invisible in the audience. \u00a0 To each other. \u00a0 To ourselves.<\/p>\n That’s a shame. \u00a0 Disney wholesomeness isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and in fact it’s only mine provisionally. \u00a0 I like it to be there, but a steady diet of it would suffocate me. \u00a0 And it would have when I was a teenager too. \u00a0 But that Disney-esq sensibility about life is more me then not. I like my visits to Key West, they relax and de-stress me nicely. \u00a0 But my visits to Walt Disney World rekindle something inside of me that I had thought long dead. \u00a0 That, it’s a small world after all attitude. \u00a0 That idealized Main Street USA. \u00a0 That Tomorrowland, where we would all live someday in a world where science and the pursuit of knowledge weren’t just good things, but a great adventure. \u00a0 Sniff at it if you like, but there are worse visions to have become attached to as a kid, to keep close to your heart as an adult, to hand down now to the kids among us.<\/p>\n I should have been a part of that vision when I was a kid. \u00a0 All of us gay kids should have. \u00a0 We were there in the audience, but invisible…even to ourselves. \u00a0 So instead of Disney’s future, we got told we were mentally ill. \u00a0 Instead of Disney wholesomeness we were taught that our desires were a sickness best kept hidden away from decent people, and especially children. \u00a0 Our friends got the happily ever after. \u00a0 We got the gutter. \u00a0 The great big beautiful tomorrow we could all look forward too would be a better place because we would not be in it. \u00a0 You can’t tell me that didn’t make a difference in the adults we all eventually became.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
Disney Channel’s Strict \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDon’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy<\/a><\/h3>\n