Disney Didn’t Leave the GOP Behind — Culture Did

The Republican Party's current fight with Disney over "don't say gay" legislation - including threats by Florida Republicans to strip it of current legal advantages - reflects two things: (i) how completely the Christofascists and evangelicals taken control of the GOP, and (ii) how desperate amoral Republican office holders are to whip that base into a frensy for their own perceived political gain.  The Christofascists and evangelicals have long targeted gays with their hatred for to me a simple reason: our existence and the growing medical and scientific proof that homosexuality is a normal sexual orientation variant  threatens their fairy tale belief system.  Now, with the number of "Nones" - those with no religious affiliation growing every year and larger percentages of the yonger generations coming out as LGBT, the misnamed "Christian" conservatives border on the hysterical.  They are increasingly outside the cultural mainstream and opportunistic politicians are only too happy to play to their hatred and bigotry.  A piece in Politico looks at how the culture, not just Disney has left the GOP and its angry white base.  Here are excepts:

Once upon a time, Disney-bashing was primarily a liberal activity. Whether it was the company’s perceived stale, Cold War-era morality, its stranglehold on global pop culture or simply its role as one of America’s preeminent corporate monoliths, the company was a reliable punching bag for pugilistic left-of-center activists and cultural critics.

Now the tables have turned. The Walt Disney Company finds itself at the center of a controversy stoked by Republicans who, incensed by the company’s opposition to a piece of legislation recently signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, are trying to paint it as the enemy of all things good, decent and godly in America. Dubbed by its enemies the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, . . . . critics say will have an overall chilling effect for gay educators, potentially driving them out of the workforce altogether.

But the details of the policy itself are almost beside the point. The attempt by Republicans to demonize one of America’s most beloved and trusted corporations seems so quixotic on its face that it invites a simple question: not “Why would they do this?” or even “Why would they think it could be done?” but “Why would it even seem advantageous to try?”

Disney has always been an explicitly morally instructive company; its characters were used as propaganda during World War II. Walt Disney’s original vision for Walt Disney World in Orlando was a model for a healthy civic society, among many other examples. Conservatives now simply disapprove of the corporation’s chosen morality, which includes commonly accepted progressive ideas about multiculturalism and personal identity.

The story of fighting back against that gradual, seemingly inevitable leftward cultural creep is more or less the story of conservatism itself. The incentives and pressures that have led conservatives on this particular quest, however — one that’s not only almost certainly hopeless, but that has led them into sinister rhetorical territory in referring to opponents of the law as “groomers,” or manipulative pedophiles — are quite modern, and reveal how much both our cultural and political landscape have shifted over just the past decade of American life.

Disney’s original critics from the left accused the company of whitewashing American life and spreading the post-war nuclear-family myth to unwilling recipients across the globe. What both the company’s cultural architects and critics could both agree on is that it represented, at least by the standards of pop culture, the middle-brow American mainstream.

The conservative critique of Disney today is premised on the idea that by aligning with liberal social causes, it’s left that mainstream behind. . . . . have turned a discrete disagreement over a piece of legislation into the fulcrum for a full-fledged culture war.

They now accuse notionally LGBT-friendly companies like Disney of “grooming” children — an astonishingly cynical rhetorical flourish that, by misappropriating a term used to describe pedophiles, manages to conflate homosexuality and pedophilia, profoundly disrespect actual survivors of child sex abuse by using their experience as a political cudgel, and invoke the specter of far-right conspiracy theories like “Pizzagate” all at once.

The approach recalls the anti-gay crusades of the 1970s. A soundbite from conservative activist and erstwhile pop star Anita Bryant that’s made the rounds since the introduction of the Florida bill could have come from the keyboard of Rufo or any number of today’s anti-gay activists . . .

By contrast, Disney’s move toward broader LGBTQ-friendliness is in lockstep with the American public; support for gay rights has been on an unbroken and steep rise for the past decade.

The GOP attacks on Disney are reminiscent above all else of their unsuccessful campaign against the NFL, with its support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Both are among the few remaining monocultural institutions in American life and present an irresistible opportunity to make a broader case about the national “character.” . . . . conservatives have conflated corporate messaging with support for extreme edge cases within each issue, like police abolition or medical youth gender transition, hoping that Americans will do the same.

Embedded in that effort is the recognition that when it comes to the core issues at hand — support for the racial justice movement and LGBTQ rights — the ship has sailed leftward and has been doing so since the 1960s, if not before. If you’re a committed conservative activist, that’s a genuine cause for lamentation. If you’re an ambitious Republican like Ron DeSantis, it’s a potential opportunity to win the base’s fealty.

But in their choice of target, and the hateful and off-putting character of their attack to all but the most extremely online conservative activists, they’ve unwittingly revealed just how little leverage they really wield when it comes to America’s cultural mainstream.

At times, I look forward to a day when Christianity - at least the Christofacists\ version - is a dead religion.  As for the Republicans who prostitute themsevles to, I say a pox on them all.