When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1557 into law last year — Parental Rights in Education — it evoked an eruption from The Walt Disney Company. This week, in special session, Florida’s Legislature is slated to pass a bill removing the virtually independent status of Disney World in Orlando and turning control of its 25,000-acre development over to a board appointed by the governor.
Last year Disney challenged DeSantis and the state’s Legislature directly for passing the parental rights bill. Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek issued this statement:
Florida’s HB 1557, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, should never have been passed and should never have been signed into law.
Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down by the courts, and we remain committed to support the national and state organizations working to achieve that.
We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.
This naturally outraged DeSantis and those legislators who overwhelming supported the new law. The statement from Disney reflected how far the corporate entertainment giant had moved from being “family friendly” to being a propaganda transmission belt for radical cultural change.
HB 1557 is simplicity itself. It prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity to students in kindergarten through third grade. It also requires schools to keep parents informed of healthcare services provided, and allows parents to pre-approve any questionnaires or health screenings on their children beforehand.
Yesterday DeSantis spoke to reporters about the bill about to be passed:
Disney is going to pay its fair share of taxes and Disney is going to honor [its] debt….
This is now going to be controlled by the state of Florida. So, there’s a new sheriff in town.
A statement from the governor’s office explained:
Until Governor DeSantis acted, The Walt Disney Company maintained sole control over the [Reedy Creek Improvement] District.
This power amounted to an unaccountable Corporate Kingdom.
The statement added that the new legislation would permanently eliminate Disney’s self-governing status and in its stead impose a “state-controlled, term-limited board” with its members being appointed by the governor.
It also made clear that Disney’s main office, located in Burbank, California, wouldn’t be able to meddle in Florida’s Disney World’s affairs:
[The bill] provides no control of the district to the leftist local government in Orange County, which threatened to leverage the situation to raise local taxes.
That leftist Orange County had already turned Disney into a transmission belt for leftist agendas. As the New York Post noted:
In a sinister cartoon airing on Disney+ called “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder,” the characters proclaim, “Slaves built this country, and we the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering and continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in [the] systemic prejudice, racism and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.”
Disney also put money ahead of principle in protecting its relationship with the communists presently running China. It has billions invested in a number of theme parks in that country and caters to its leadership.
For example, in 2022, Disney removed an episode of The Simpsons from its streaming platform in Hong Kong. This particular episode mentioned “forced labor camps” in China and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, which the communists want to continue to suppress.
DeSantis is very well aware of Disney’s proclivity to get into bed with the communists in China. In March 2022, when Disney first announced its intention to repeal Florida’s parental rights law, he said:
… you have companies like … Disney that are going to say and criticize parents’ rights — they’re going to criticize the fact that we don’t want transgenderism in kindergarten and first grade classrooms.
If that’s the hill they’re going to die on, then how do they possibly explain lining their pockets with their relationship with the Communist Party of China?
Because that’s what they do, and they make a fortune, and they don’t say a word about the really brutal practices that you see over there at the hands of the CCP [the Chinese Communist Party].
DeSantis and the Florida Legislature are to be commended for bringing a modicum of common sense back to a world seemingly intent on destroying itself — and for providing a warning to other companies seeking to overstep their bounds in attempting to influence the culture in deadly ways.
