New Disney CEO Shuts Down Homophobe, Commits to LGBTQ+ Inclusion

Disney has begun showing the slightest inclination towards LGBTQ+ inclusion in its shows and movies lately. Literally, just the slightest.

While shows like Love, Victor (formerly Love, Simon) and High Fidelity, both of which featured queer characters, were bumped from Disney+ to Hulu due to being deemed too adult for the family friendly channel, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series features a very tame gay storyline, Disney Channel’s Andi Mack had a whole coming out journey for a supporting character, and both Jungle Cruise and Marvel’s The Eternals are set to have gay characters (though the former sounds like it will be a blink-and-you-miss-it scenario).

All the same, inclusivity of any kind is quick to set off homophobes eager to raise the alarm that children might be forced to see LGBTQ+ folks as like, normal human beings or whatever.

One such “concerned citizen,” Caroline Farrow of CitizenGo, marched her homophobia directly to Disney CEO Bob Chapek during a recent shareholder meeting.

“At a time when your stock is down by 20%, is it perhaps time to reconsider what you can do to make Disney more family friendly?” she asked. “To make it safe for people around the world, not just one particular minority?”

There are many issues with her questions, not the least of which is the part where every company’s stocks went down due to a little thing called a worldwide pandemic, rather than specifically being linked to anything gay, but ok, Karen.

Regardless, Chapek wasn’t interested in her twisting around the situation, or her pearl clutching over “one particularly minority” making things “unsafe” for children.

“At Disney, we strongly believe we should reflect in our creative content the diversity that we find in our fanbase and our audience,” he replied. “And I believe that will continue with an increased commitment as we move forward.

“We want to represent our audience. We believe we want to tell stories that our audience wants to hear, that reflects their lives.”

Chapek was only named CEO of Disney in early February, after long-time CEO Bob Iger suddenly stepped down. His new comments provide an optimistic outlook for Disney’s future in terms of LGBTQ+ inclusivity, something they have really lagged behind on compared to other big studios.

But shutting down a homophobe so graciously and completely is certainly a good sign.