Disney's LGBT Agenda "Forces" Family Trip Cancellation

[Maggie Mae]

She's a liar. 

Her site went down, people left comments on her Facebook. She's loving the attention. And deleting "hateful, threatening comments." Except threatening and mean comments are everyone who disagrees. Which means she can be a martyr to the people who are fawning over her "ability to stand up for her beliefs." 

There's nothing modest about humble bragging over the cost of vacation, or comparing one's self to Jesus. 

[Mercer]

I’m Brooke, the blogger behind TMM.  I’m a 23 year old stay-at-home mom of two master mess makers, Johannah [3] and Elijah [1], and wife of a preacher man. Proving that modesty isn’t frumpy, marriage is blissful, motherhood is hard, and

being Christ-like is easy.

Riiight. Can anyone picture this woman literally dying on a cross for someone? She can't even change her luxurious vacation plans without throwing a fit, bitching about it to the entire internet, and writing at agonizing length about how victimized and martyred she is. I can't quite imagine her healing lepers or giving all her worldly goods to the poor.

I would think most Christians would consider that statement fairly blasphemous. Striving to be Christ-like is one thing, but declaring it easy? 

[purjolok84]

I’m Brooke, the blogger behind TMM.  I’m a 23 year old stay-at-home mom of two master mess makers, Johannah [3] and Elijah [1], and wife of a preacher man. Proving that modesty isn’t frumpy, marriage is blissful, motherhood is hard, and
being Christ-like is easy.

Riiight. Can anyone picture this woman literally dying on a cross for someone? She can't even change her luxurious vacation plans without throwing a fit, bitching about it to the entire internet, and writing at agonizing length about how victimized and martyred she is. I can't quite imagine her healing lepers or giving all her worldly goods to the poor.
I would think most Christians would consider that statement fairly blasphemous. Striving to be Christ-like is one thing, but declaring it easy? 


I think it would definitely be blasphemous of her. Being a Christian, living by more moderate standards today, is still difficult. To live by specific standards, ignore conflicting ones and above all try to be a good person must be very complicated. To claim that it's easy is flippant and arrogant.

[TeddyBonkers]

Quote

I’m Brooke, the blogger behind TMM.  I’m a 23 year old stay-at-home mom of two master mess makers, Johannah [3] and Elijah [1], and wife of a preacher man. Proving that modesty isn’t frumpy, marriage is blissful, motherhood is hard, and

being Christ-like is easy.

I am of two minds on this last part. The one mind says, yes, it is fairly easy to be a Christian (at least in America, and  being Christ-like is not the same as identifying as Christian). Not one person is calling for her to leave her country due to her religion, for example, which is why I say it is fairly easy.

The other mind says, no, being Christ-like is difficult, doesn't it say so in the Bible? 

[mango_fandango]

The most ridiculous thing about this is that Christians complain about the "gay agenda" and "the liberal left shoving LGBT down our throats", yet if they had their way they'd be shoving religion down our throats. You don't want a (non-existent) gay agenda? I don't want your religion. Kindly fuck off.

[Seahorse Wrangler]

I'm pretty sure being Christ-like is hard for these people since they'd have to deal with the kind of people Jesus dealt with.

 

The poor, the sick, tax-collectors, women.

 

I'm fairly certain if Jesus came back now, he'd be supporting the down-trodden still. The gays, the trans-gender, the poor, the sick, the women..

[Jug Band Baby]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eXcNelklZo

 

Watch from 35 seconds to 46 seconds.  Disney's openly supported gay people at least since Princess Diaries 2.  If her daughter was going to catch "the gay," it would have happened before now.

[Mercer]

Even more than most fundies, Brooke seems to be a one-issue Christian, and that issue is being anti-gay.

This part of the original blog post was very weird to me:

Quote

Some of the most popular shows (Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, Quantico, This Is Us, Greys Anatomy, The Good Wife, etc.), most of which air on ABC, a Disney owned network, I quit watching them all when they revealed exclusively LGBT characters.

I admittedly haven't see all of those, but I've watched a fair bit of Grey's Anatomy and Scandal and those shows both have a massive amount of sexual content, the majority of it outside of marriages and some of it adulterous. They're basically shows about people hooking up in various permutations with some medicine and politics thrown in the mix. (Not a criticism - I like them both! - just being blunt here.) Grey's Anatomy's major starting premise is a sexual affair where the man turns out to be married, and this relationship is portrayed sympathetically. The show also features a sympathetic portrayal of a character having an abortion.

But all that is okay, and Brooke's objections only kick in when a character is "exclusively" gay? (I'm actually not quite clear on what that means - I guess bisexuality is okay?) For someone supposedly sticking to her guns about not watching things that violate her beliefs, her line in the sand is a really odd one.

My cynical take is that she did this whole thing to stir up controversy. Her blog is monetized and the more traffic she gets, the better her ad revenue. I think this may all be more about marketing than "beliefs."

[onekidanddone]

On 3/7/2017 at 2:46 PM, amandaaries said:

It seems like the one good thing about 2017 is that most bigots are pretty openly identifying themselves.  It's fucky that we still have to deal with bigotry, this far along in time, but here we are.  At least this woman will stay home with her hatred and anger, rather than judging families with two moms or two dads or whatever at Disneyworld.  

I have to admit that I'm stunned by her writing.  So very judgmental, and yet no time to check grammar?  And how many sentence fragments did she begin with "which"?  At a certain point, that indicates a lack of knowledge of grammar, rather than a stylistic choice.

 Here's one sad paragraph that started to make my eyes twitch: 

"Disney isn’t just aiming their efforts towards parent’s [sic] of Disney-aged children anymore. They are pointing a desperate finger at the innocence of our youth. Disney is targeting our youth like they’re aiming at big game on a corporate hunting trip. They are banking on corrupting the purity of a child’s mind for the 1%. They are no longer making watching a choice [really? how?  I've avoided Disney for years, by choice], but by forcing it [what is "it"?] to become mainstream, Disney is telling the conservative family, the Christian public, that they’re [sic] views hold no worth. In jest, they’re subtly encouraging you to conform your ways. [wait, which way? Your way? That's not okay?] (Mark 13:22)"*

I wonder what 1% she is referencing here.  I can't imagine she's angry at the wealthy who hoard their money abroad, avoiding taxes, and I'd gladly bet a dollar that she voted for Angry Agent Orange. LBGTQIA+ people comprise more than 1% of the population.  What straw man is she inventing?  

*Pedantic and bitchy bracketed comments all mine. 

 

Disney is targeting our children.  They are targeting our children and their parents with mass marketing of product placement. Their movies morph into toys, clothing, books, happy meals  and so on.  My daughter even had an ugly as shit pink princess bike when she was really young. Oh not just the bike.  She had backpacks, a suit case, and sticklers all over her wall. Now some of that was on me,  I caved and bought the crap. But really in the end it is innocuous junk that takes up space. The 'Gay Agenda', however is fucking bullshit.  And this lady is  a freaking nut job.

[mango_fandango]

I was never hugely into Disney as a kid. I saw Snow White, Peter Pan, the Jungle Book etc, and my favourite movie at around 3-5ish was "Puppies" (101 Dalmatians), but I never got into the princessy ones (did see Sleeping Beauty, but wasn't obsessed). But it is really all innocuous and non-threatening. And it's not like LeFou is going to have a big ol' gay sex scene.

[Maggie Mae]

I recently watched "Pinnochio" as it came out of the "vault" (Which, why? No one buys physical copies of films anymore.) and I was surprised as to how dark it was. The animation was good, though, there's something that's just so nice about the old fashioned hand-painted frames. 

[apandaaries]

36 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Disney is targeting our children.  They are targeting our children and their parents with mass marketing of product placement. Their movies morph into toys, clothing, books, happy meals  and so on.  My daughter even had an ugly as shit pink princess bike when she was really young. Oh not just the bike.  She had backpacks, a suit case, and sticklers all over her wall. Now some of that was on me,  I caved and bought the crap. But really in the end it is innocuous junk that takes up space. The 'Gay Agenda', however is fucking bullshit.  And this lady is  a freaking nut job.

I agree that their marketing is strongly directed toward children, obviously.  But I also know that it is possible to do a lot to avoid their bullshit marketing.  My daughter just turned 13.  We did watch Disney movies together when she was younger, but it was limited viewing, not nonstop Disney channel BS (not saying you're doing that, but some parents definitely do.  And avoiding or turning off the channel is easy).  We didn't find it necessary to buy into the endless product lines; we bought other books and engaged in other activities.  

 I worked to avoid a princess mindset in my kid and it wasn't the hardest thing in the world.  I didn't let her idealize princess characters; we talked a lot about historical corruption and the politics of putting one person or family above everyone else in society...because most of us are everyone else.  How are those characters treated?  Is anyone really so special that they deserve far better treatment than anyone else?  People should serve them because of where they were born?  That doesn't fit with our ideals of equality. 

  When we watched Pocahontas, we talked a lot about how she would really have been treated, how her tribe fared, how the Europeans regarded the Native Americans...we even wound up discussing the Trail of Tears (poor kid wound up asking, "Whatever happened to those European germbags?"  That was a tough question to answer).  I wanted to raise a kid who understands nuance, not one who divides the world into the good and bad characters. Disney offers a shallow presentation oftentimes, so we added a lot of additional context for our viewing and discussion time.  

Parents who do decide to give in and buy the crap do bear that responsibility.  It's not essential stuff, and not necessarily innocuous.  Some studies indicate that girls who idealize princesses wind up with negative body images, antiquated ideas about gender roles, and the most fucked up ideas about romantic love out there (Here's one good study from 2015: http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=edspec201019).  Everyone has different ideas about raising kids, and I know my views on Disney are a bit extreme.  But I think it's necessary, since there are some people out there who are bizarrely fixated on Disneyland and those movies.  I don't find that healthy.  I do appreciate that Disney is finally starting to make some more positive changes (more diversity, some criticism of the love at first sight idea, including a gay character, finally, with hope for more in the future), but I don't feel the need to further enrich an already powerful company.  They can do quite a bit of targeting and product placement, but it's also possible to not buy their shit and not let the kids watch their movies all the time.  

[PennySycamore]

4 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

I recently watched "Pinnochio" as it came out of the "vault" (Which, why? No one buys physical copies of films anymore.) and I was surprised as to how dark it was. The animation was good, though, there's something that's just so nice about the old fashioned hand-painted frames. 

Ummm... I still buy physical copies of films.  I bought my granddaughter the Blu-Ray of Moana last Thursday.  If you have the DVD or Blu-Ray of the film then you own the copy forever.  If you just have the digital copy then you own it as long as you own that piece of technology.

I don't care for Pinocchio because it's so damn preachy.  It does have good animation though.

[Maggie Mae]

13 minutes ago, PennySycamore said:

f you have the DVD or Blu-Ray of the film then you own the copy forever.  If you just have the digital copy then you own it as long as you own that piece of technology.

I don't care for Pinocchio because it's so damn preachy.  It does have good animation though.

1

I suppose that's true, but DVD's will only last until they stop making DVD players. Just like I can't watch treasured copy of Willy Wonka with the trailer for Animaniacs before the film - it's on VHS and there aren't VHS players anymore. Had to rebuy

I used to have all of my "classic" Disney films on VHS, but I'm slowly converting to digital. I didn't mean to knock the physical copies of things - I get annoyed by some of the "rules" surrounding digital purchases. I was more annoyed by the idea of the "vault" which creates this false sense of scarcity for Disney films. When it was VHS/DVD, you could still go and rent it at a Blockbuster or Family Video. Now, if I want to watch something that is "in the vault" I have to download or stream it illegally. I just think the vault is stupid. 

I bought a physical copy of Robin Hood recently and it came with a digital copy. Never even put the blue-ray in the XBox. But I can see doing that if we are close to our internet cap or someone else is streaming something different already. 

[FloraKitty35]

My impression of this woman was that she has never had a real problem in her life.  

[PennySycamore]

@Maggie Mae, yeah I hate the stupid Disney Vault thing too!  I hadn't seen many ads for Disney Blu-Ray/DVD releases lately that referred to the vault, but maybe I'm just not listening carefully enough to the ads.  My copy of Pinocchio is just on DVD and that's fine.  It's probably my least favorite of the Disney animated classics.  I'd rather spend money of copies of Dumbo or 101 Dalmatians.

[purjolok84]

My impression of this woman was that she has never had a real problem in her life.  

And in addition to this, I feel that she is very 'selective' with her problems.

[onekidanddone]

On 3/13/2017 at 6:33 PM, amandaaries said:

I agree that their marketing is strongly directed toward children, obviously.  But I also know that it is possible to do a lot to avoid their bullshit marketing.  My daughter just turned 13.  We did watch Disney movies together when she was younger, but it was limited viewing, not nonstop Disney channel BS (not saying you're doing that, but some parents definitely do.  And avoiding or turning off the channel is easy).  We didn't find it necessary to buy into the endless product lines; we bought other books and engaged in other activities.  

 I worked to avoid a princess mindset in my kid and it wasn't the hardest thing in the world.  I didn't let her idealize princess characters; we talked a lot about historical corruption and the politics of putting one person or family above everyone else in society...because most of us are everyone else.  How are those characters treated?  Is anyone really so special that they deserve far better treatment than anyone else?  People should serve them because of where they were born?  That doesn't fit with our ideals of equality. 

  When we watched Pocahontas, we talked a lot about how she would really have been treated, how her tribe fared, how the Europeans regarded the Native Americans...we even wound up discussing the Trail of Tears (poor kid wound up asking, "Whatever happened to those European germbags?"  That was a tough question to answer).  I wanted to raise a kid who understands nuance, not one who divides the world into the good and bad characters. Disney offers a shallow presentation oftentimes, so we added a lot of additional context for our viewing and discussion time.  

Parents who do decide to give in and buy the crap do bear that responsibility.  It's not essential stuff, and not necessarily innocuous.  Some studies indicate that girls who idealize princesses wind up with negative body images, antiquated ideas about gender roles, and the most fucked up ideas about romantic love out there (Here's one good study from 2015: http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=edspec201019).  Everyone has different ideas about raising kids, and I know my views on Disney are a bit extreme.  But I think it's necessary, since there are some people out there who are bizarrely fixated on Disneyland and those movies.  I don't find that healthy.  I do appreciate that Disney is finally starting to make some more positive changes (more diversity, some criticism of the love at first sight idea, including a gay character, finally, with hope for more in the future), but I don't feel the need to further enrich an already powerful company.  They can do quite a bit of targeting and product placement, but it's also possible to not buy their shit and not let the kids watch their movies all the time.  

Quite true.  I caved on some of the stuff, but most was purchased by an indulgent grandma.  Even though I kept telling my mom to stop the junk kept coming.  My kid is also 13 and still goes to the Pixar movies with her friends (with her allowance), but I am so happy she is over the rest of the unnecessary plastic objects. I used to know somebody who was so obsessed with Disney I swear she had her own DSM-V code. She loved it so much, when she was living in Florida she would go practically ever week. Yuck.

[Shiny]

I just don't get this Gay Agenda. Is like a sleeper agent? Because my kids have been around gay people since birth (one was even at the birth of my second, yikes!)  and none of them are gay yet. What's the incubation period on something like this...how long from exposure to gay, I wonder.  

Now, the Disney Agenda. That shit is catching. 

I didn't realize this chick was only 23. I wonder how, at 23, you can prove marriage is blissful. Heck, I'm sure you can't prove motherhood is hard when you've only been doing it three years. Toddlerhood, sure, but not parenthood as a whole. Usually you look back at a long life or marriage or parenthood and then make a judgment. 

[onekidanddone]

46 minutes ago, Shiny said:

I just don't get this Gay Agenda. Is like a sleeper agent? Because my kids have been around gay people since birth (one was even at the birth of my second, yikes!)  and none of them are gay yet. What's the incubation period on something like this...how long from exposure to gay, I wonder.  

Now, the Disney Agenda. That shit is catching. 

I didn't realize this chick was only 23. I wonder how, at 23, you can prove marriage is blissful. Heck, I'm sure you can't prove motherhood is hard when you've only been doing it three years. Toddlerhood, sure, but not parenthood as a whole. Usually you look back at a long life or marriage or parenthood and then make a judgment. 

I was Facebook friends with a same sex couple who had a kid a little older than mine.  One of the dads would post his day; work, Jiffy Lube,dinner, grocery store, helping kid with homework and laundry.  I told him the Gay Agenda was the dullest damn thing I had ever heard.

[Tatar-tot]

Good.  As DVC members I do not want my children to be exposed to homophobic bigots during our trip to Disney.   

Disney World is the happiest place on Earth.  Freaky weird people who are bigots, homophobics, and, in general narrow minded individuals can go down the street to the weird Jesus theme park, go to Ohio and see the Creation Museum, or, visit the fake Ark.   

Thank you so much wacky family for canceling your trip.  You just opened up a room for a much more progressive family that represents America.  

[Toothfairy]

What is it with Christians and gay people?

[Jug Band Baby]

The vault made a lot of sense for a while.  It was brilliant, actually.  If they made videos and DVDs and released them and kept them on shelves, there'd always be an unsold supply.  By making their releases limited before sending the "back to the vault," they ensured a sell-out.  From a business standpoint, this is genius.  They got the full price and had no waste.  

But now, coming "out of the vault" just means that that's the one about to be re-released.  Since they remaster the visuals, and sometimes audio, it's not as easy as just putting them all out there.  They have to do a lot of work to clean them up first.  And when they release now, the proliferation of digital has made it pointless to limit the releases to sell out their printed copies.

Now about the movie.   I saw it a couple days ago, and was incredibly underwhelmed by Emma Watson.  She made Belle into a cocky, inconsiderate brat who I wanted to slap before the end of the first song.  I wish it was possible to get a refund on a ticket I bought in January.  That's how much I anticipated seeing this movie.

The gay stuff was mild, at most, and slightly offensive at times for a movie that wasn't supposed a comedy.  The most anti-gay of people can walk away shaking their heads at gay people while the most progressive of people will probably see a few jokes that would have been funny in a comedy movie.  Nothing was over the top, no almost kissing.  If Disney hadn't confirmed LeFou as gay, then we wouldn't know for sure.  He's effeminate at times, and that's really it.  One of the earliest jokes would have been missed altogether if we didn't know he's gay in this movie.  It was really overhyped.  I still wish that they hadn't chosen someone on the bay guy side 

Spoiler

who spends more time questioning if he wants to stick by his jerkass friend of turn away from him

, but for what it was, it was really nothing.  Nothing to celebrate, not enough for LGBT people to identify with, not blatant enough for bigots to get their knickers in a twist over.  I bet money a lot of them would have missed it altogether without the fuss.

[amazing707]

On 3/7/2017 at 11:46 AM, amandaaries said:

It seems like the one good thing about 2017 is that most bigots are pretty openly identifying themselves.  It's fucky that we still have to deal with bigotry, this far along in time, but here we are.  At least this woman will stay home with her hatred and anger, rather than judging families with two moms or two dads or whatever at Disneyworld.  

I have to admit that I'm stunned by her writing.  So very judgmental, and yet no time to check grammar?  And how many sentence fragments did she begin with "which"?  At a certain point, that indicates a lack of knowledge of grammar, rather than a stylistic choice.

 Here's one sad paragraph that started to make my eyes twitch: 

"Disney isn’t just aiming their efforts towards parent’s [sic] of Disney-aged children anymore. They are pointing a desperate finger at the innocence of our youth. Disney is targeting our youth like they’re aiming at big game on a corporate hunting trip. They are banking on corrupting the purity of a child’s mind for the 1%. They are no longer making watching a choice [really? how?  I've avoided Disney for years, by choice], but by forcing it [what is "it"?] to become mainstream, Disney is telling the conservative family, the Christian public, that they’re [sic] views hold no worth. In jest, they’re subtly encouraging you to conform your ways. [wait, which way? Your way? That's not okay?] (Mark 13:22)"*

I wonder what 1% she is referencing here.  I can't imagine she's angry at the wealthy who hoard their money abroad, avoiding taxes, and I'd gladly bet a dollar that she voted for Angry Agent Orange. LBGTQIA+ people comprise more than 1% of the population.  What straw man is she inventing?  

*Pedantic and bitchy bracketed comments all mine. 

 

She literally puts 3-4 commas in every single sentence! Most of which are totally NOT necessary. It was annoying as hell.

[Mercer]

I stumbled upon this blog again while looking for different things, and actually took time to read the some of the backstory - and I'm now prepared to call BS (or at least wild exaggeration) on her whole story.

Brooke gives the impression in the first few paragraphs of her boycott post that her family ate, slept, and breathed Disney prior to the outing of Lefou. The actual posting history doesn't bear that out, though.

She posted about their first trip to Disney in December 2016. Since the boycott post was in March 2017 - making the two posts about three months apart - and they aren't local, it's unlikely that they went in the meantime, meaning she canceled what would have been only their second trip. Not exactly the Disney diehards she implied, or a family tradition the kids would have counted on. To be fair, she does mention this in her boycott post, but it gets a little lost in all the drama about how much they love it and how sad the kids will be.

The post about their first Disney trip was decidedly lukewarm. They had a good time, but per Brooke, "Even though it was fun, Disney World doesn’t get my first vote for vacay." Then she spends most of the post complaining about aspects she didn't like, while only occasionally bringing up things she did.

http://www.thismodestmom.com/our-first-trip-to-disney-world/

I did a search for the word "Disney." It's not so much as mentioned even once between the post about their trip and the post about boycotting. There are a few posts about planning their first trip (nothing about planning a possible return trip as far as I could see,) but the majority of writing that included the word "Disney" was about her intention to boycott and the subsequent internet blowback.

So all this to say... I think she was majorly playing up her interest in Disney to make her "boycott" seem more meaningful than it is. I don't think they were ever bigger fans of Disney than the average person, but she exaggerated for attention and page views. That makes me suspicious of the whole thing - whether they even had a serious intention of going, and why they would have conveniently planned to blow $6,000 at a destination that "doesn't get my first vote for vacay" at the exact moment she could create some fake controversy with it.

I think it really comes down to the fact that this is a monetized blog, pure and simple, and she grabbed onto an issue she thought would make waves - which it did.