There I was on a cold Tuesday morning, sitting at my computer and drinking coffee before work. I was not looking for conflict or controversy. My first aim with logging on to YouTube was to find tutorials on processing deer meat. Yet what I found instead was a video on YouTube’s home page cataloging gay characters in Disney movies and Disney Channel TV shows.
The video starts in 2014 with the Disney Channel comedy, Good Luck Charlie. A little girl coming to visit is accompanied by two mommies. Fast-forward to 2016, and Disney announces the first openly gay couple in one of their feature-length films. Fast-forward again to 2017 and Disney airs the first gay kiss on its cartoon show, Star vs. the Forces of Evil. Later that same year, LeFou in the live-action version of Beauty and the Beast is shown to be overtly homosexual, especially in his fawning over Gaston. This, I would point out, was the only example in the video I had known about. But anyways. A few months later and Disney Channel has a “coming out” scene on its teen drama, The Lodge. Finally, late last month, in October of 2017, Disney Channel revealed its first openly gay main character.
Forgive me for stating the obvious. Disney is normalizing homosexuality for children. And that is a bad thing, and contrary to God. It is wicked and perverse. Disney should be ashamed of itself. The rest of us who watch and let our children watch Disney productions should be that much more on our guard now with this information than we were before.
Yet that’s not the most disturbing thing I have to tell you. The most disturbing thing has to do with my thought-process that followed.
To Share, Or Not To Share – That Is The Question
There I was about 5:00 or 6:00AM, sipping my bitter coffee. Yet my coffee was sweet compared with the taste of gall rising in my throat as the video ended. And I forgot entirely about processing deer meat.
I took note of the buttons for sharing on other social media sites, especially the one for Facebook. Yet as I began to move the mouse cursor in that direction, I hesitated. Should I really share this video? Did I really want to do that this morning?
My thoughts became inundated with dozens of friends and family who might disapprove. I thought of people I don’t know very well. I thought of those I have maybe just connected with who might see the video and think ill of me for disapproving of it. Then I thought of friends who always hate it when I try to think critically about children’s entertainment. Next, I thought of those who agree with me but have decided it’s just too stressful to explore controversial subjects on Facebook, so they hide from them – and perhaps also from those who choose to explore anyway.
Lastly, I thought of the recent words of one of my close confidants when I asked him what he thought of the things I post on Facebook. “Focus on what unites rather than divides.” And these last words kept ringing in my ears as I let go the mouse and slumped back in my desk chair.
“Focus on what unites rather than divides.” What does that really leave? Surely not a video documenting Disney’s increasingly bold campaign to normalize homosexuality for children. Perhaps it would be best to keep that particular video to myself.
I became apprehensive, maybe even a little afraid.
The Wrong Road
This, then, bothered me more than the video itself. Why was I afraid? Why should I be embarrassed or ashamed to object to these objectionable things? And why should those promoting vices and perversions as healthy and virtuous be allowed to molest young minds with impunity and not be countered or challenged? I suddenly felt a great coward.
If my apprehension and fear was going to win out, so too then had the perverts and miscreants. And if we who know better now live in a day and age where we do not comment on such things publicly because we are embarrassed most by our objections to children being taught to love wickedness, then the people who want to normalize these things have won a great victory. They have succeeded in making us to feel like the freaks who should hide ourselves. And we have handed that victory to them by fleeing the battlefield when we should have stood fast.
Yet isn’t that always up to us to decide? And are we not at every instant still faced with the choice whether to keep on such a course or change it? As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
It’s almost too obvious to be worth stating that what Disney is doing is “the wrong road” and needs to be turned back from. Yet there is a subtler thing which is not obvious to many people, and which is becoming increasingly difficult to convince them of. That is, our fear of objecting is also “the wrong road,” and it needs to be repented of.
Woe To Disney
Would someone call me a Pharisee or question my motives and authority if I quoted Jesus on this point? In Matthew 18:5-6, Jesus is very bold and direct.
“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
It is putting it mildly to conclude from this that Christ takes it seriously when children are taught to embrace wickedness as healthy and virtuous. And in the next verse I think he would speak as clearly to the decision-makers at Disney as to anyone else.
“Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!”
And if Jesus would not say “Woe” to the Disney executives, producers, and script-writers responsible for this campaign to normalize homosexuality for children, I can hardly imagine who he would say it to. But if Jesus would say such a thing to them, is it out of bounds for us to? Or are we wrong to call such people to repentance of these specific sins? Shouldn’t we try to mitigate their influence over children, or try to save children from their indoctrination?
Someone may quote the Apostle Paul on this point, as he wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:12. “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” But I would quote Paul in several other places saying “I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers.”
The things outside the church have a knack for getting inside it.
