I know this headline sounds like a tasteless joke or like something out of a bad dream, but it’s not.
As reported on CNN.com, “The Walt Disney Company has given notice to the Boy Scouts of America that it will pull all funding to the group starting in 2015 because of a BSA membership policy that bans gay leaders.”
That’s right. The creators of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and Goofy and Pluto and the makers of classic children’s films like Bambi and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will stop funding the Boy Scouts of America until the BSA allows openly homosexual scout leaders.
Has the Disney Company lost its mind—or its moral bearings?
It was only a few months ago that the BSA, caving in to financial pressure and public criticism, changed its long-standing policy of refusing openly homosexual Scout members.
But the BSA was quite clear that this policy did not extend to Scout leaders, since many of those who wanted openly homosexual kids to be able to serve in the Boy Scouts had some real problems with openly homosexual Scout leaders.
Did anyone really believe it would stop there?
As I stated in a TV debate with a local gay journalist, there was no possible way that gay activists would stop until the BSA allowed openly gay Scout leaders, as if they would be content to have young, gay-identified men work their way through the Boy Scouts only to be shut out from leadership once they graduated. In fact, the gay journalist I was debating, himself expelled from the Scouts as a teenager, agreed that this was his goal too.
And now the Walt Disney Company is pushing for this change, and they are doing it aggressively as well. Is this a surprise to the BSA?
Of course, when any of us sound a warning about what’s coming next on the gay activist agenda, we are mocked and vilified for our dire predictions. And when those predictions come to pass, we are mocked again, this time as bigots who are out of step with the times.
About 10 years ago, when I first began stating that those who came out of the closet wanted to put us in the closet, the response was, “No one is trying to put you in the closet!” A few years back, I noticed a shift to “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”
When we warned parents about where the gay educational curricula was heading, we were scorned like so many Chicken Littles shouting, “The sky is falling!”
Now when outraged parents find out that their middle-school daughters (meaning 12- to 14-year-olds) have been forced to ask other young girls for a lesbian kiss and pretend they were on a date, they are told that they are overreacting and this is all part of anti-bullying training. (This happened in 2014; something similar happened in 2013.)
At what point we will learn that, until all aspects of LGBT identity and sexuality are celebrated and embraced—by the religious communities as well—it will not be enough?
Once we were told that we simply needed to be tolerant and accepting. Today we are told that being tolerant and accepting implies that something is wrong and therefore needs to be tolerated and accepted.
In fact, according to the Riddle Homophobia Scale, designed by Dr. Dorothy Riddle and used in many of our schools, “homophobic” attitudes include 1) repulsion, 2) pity, 3) tolerance and 4) acceptance. (That’s correct—”tolerance” and “acceptance” are now considered homophobic.) Listed under the positive category are 5) support, 6) admiration, 7) appreciation and 8) nurturance.
And Piers Morgan actually had the temerity to tell me that “no one is celebrating being gay” in America?
Getting back to the Boy Scouts, aside from the fact that all boys serving under an openly homosexual Scout leader would be forced to embrace homosexuality as normal—meaning, they could not express any criticism of homosexuality or say that, according to their religious or moral convictions, homosexual practice was wrong (and would the Scout leader’s partner ever be allowed to join the group?)—we cannot ignore the very real potential of increased sexual abuse.
I have no doubt that there would be many devoted gay Scout leaders who would only have the boys’ Scouting interests in mind. And in no way am I saying that most gay men are interested in molesting boys.
But have we learned nothing from the sexual scandals of the Catholic Church, where homosexual priests sexually abused altar boys, many of them in their teens? (This cannot simply be written off as pedophilia, with no homosexual overtones.)
And should we ignore the fact that a prominent gay voice like Michelangelo Signorile, writing in the Huffington Post, recently defended “intergenerational” gay sex, writing, “Some younger people are attracted to older people, and vice versa. There’s even a gay website called Daddyhunt. The famed novelist Armistead Maupin’s 27-years-younger husband, Christopher Turner, founded it. They met on another one of Turner’s sites, HotOlderMale.com. If that’s not your thing, it’s totally cool, but in that case just shut your mouth.” (Signorile is not speaking here about sexual relationships with minors.)
Should we ignore the fact that the now-sainted Harvey Milk had his first sexual encounters with other men at the age of 11 and, according to the heralded gay journalist Randy Shilts, was “leading an active homosexual life” at age 14? Or that at age 33, Milk hooked up with a 16-year-old named Jack McKinley, one of a number of younger men with whom he was intimate?
And should we turn a blind eye to the reports that began to surface in 2012 that the BSA had covered up “decades of sexual abuse,” leading to major law suits?
Yet this took place with a ban on openly gay Scouts and Scout leaders, and now the fabled Walt Disney Company is insisting on openly homosexual Scout leaders, threatening to withhold financing unless the BSA changes its policy.
What’s coming next? Mickey Mouse is gay?
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Michael Brown is author of Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message and host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show The Line of Fire on the Salem Radio Network. He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience. Follow him at AskDrBrown on Facebook or at @drmichaellbrown on Twitter.
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