DeSantis’ Attack on Disney Recalls a ’90s Culture War That the Right Lost (Guest Column)

variety.com:

Mark I. Pinsky If the increasingly bare-knuckle battle between Florida’s conservative Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the Walt Disney Co., over the Sunshine State’s new “Don’t Say Gay” law and other legislation, sounds eerily familiar, it should.The current clash of values and culture between the Sun Belt and the West Coast sharply echoes the 1990s Southern Baptist Convention’s Disney boycott.In 1995, members of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, with just under 16 million members, grew increasingly restive toward Disney.

What set them off initially was Disney’s announcement that it would provide health benefits to partners of its LGBT employees.

There was also discontent with Disney’s content, which seemed to be increasingly liberal on social and cultural issues. Their publishing arm, Hyperion, published books like “Heather Has Two Mommies” and “Growing Up Gay,” and critics even falsely charged the company’s animators of covertly inserting subliminal, obscene dialogue and occult images in their animated features.

Also, the theme park officially sanctioned “Gay Days” and supported the display of rainbow Pride flags. Analysts saw the dispute as a culture clash between Disney, with a strong commitment to the West Coast creative community, based in Burbank, which was socially liberal, urban and cosmopolitan; and conservative Southern Baptists, later joined by other evangelical groups, like the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the National Federation for Decency, who saw Disney as a bastion of family values under siege from within.