Disney Employees Slam Bob Chapek’s Memo on ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill: ‘Silence Is Unacceptable’

Oscar Isaac may be in the midst of promoting a new Disney series, but that doesn’t mean he’ll hold back criticism of the company’s corporate response to Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.

an escalating employee backlash at the Mouse House threatening to spoil the party.Disney is scrambling to contain the fallout over its response to a Florida bill that would bar teachers from discussing LGBTQ topics like sexual orientation or gender identity with students unless they’re in the fourth grade or higher. The issue prompted an internal battle among company employees who are divided on whether Disney should get political.Left-leaning employees staged walkouts this week, arguing the company failed the LGBT community by initially failing to denounce the bill.

LGBTQ+ Walt Disney Company employees and their allies put on a “full stage” walkout Tuesday at various corporate locations across the U.S. to protest what they see as a “lame” and “inadequate” stance taken by the company and its CEO Bob Chapek to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek is facing a crisis of confidence in his leader­ship that is fueling an atypical level of turmoil at the top of the world’s largest entertainment company.Though Chapek’s current em­ployment contract, expiring next February, is expected to be renewed soon, according to sources, his tenure as CEO has been marked by upheaval since he was named to the job in February 2020. Some of the disruption has been far out of his control, such as a global pandemic.

Oscar Isaac has something to say about “Don’t Say Gay.”

As many of its LGBTQ+ employees get set for a full-day walkout tomorrow, Disney has decided to postpone a management retreat set for next week as it continues efforts to calm the internal waters.

While not specifically calling out Disney’s recent debacle surrounding Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy made it known that she and her fellow PGA Milestone Award recipient George Lucas are on the right side of history, giving a shout-out to the impact of diverse, female and LGBTQ artists in the motion picture industry.

After coming under fire for its handling of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Pixar is restoring a cut scene from its upcoming film “Lightyear”.

Pixar’s forthcoming Toy Story prequel Lightyear has put a same-sex kiss back following an internal backlash to Disney’s handling of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.

Angelique Jackson A group of Disney employees have planned a week of in-person and virtual walkouts in response to the company and CEO Bob Chapek’s handling of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill.On Monday afternoon, the Twitter account called Disney Walkout posted a message explaining that, “The LGBTQIA+ workers and allies at The Walt Disney Company are standing in solidarity together over the coming weeks.”The post then linked to an open letter written in partnership with members of the LGBTQ community across the Walt Disney Company (including Disney Corporate, Disney Television Animation, Lucasfilm, Pixar, Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, Disney Streaming, Enterprise Finance, Enterprise Technology/Global Information Security and Bento Box). “The recent statements by The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) leadership regarding the Florida legislature’s recent ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill have utterly failed to match the magnitude of the threat to LGBTQIA+ safety represented by this legislation,” organizers wrote.

“When we donate money to different political candidates, we have no idea how they’re going to vote going forward into the future,” said Disney CEO Bob Chapek at a shareholders meeting this past week.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek has apologised to employees for his silence over Florida’s controversial ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill which was passed earlier this week.The Republican-led bill, formally known as Parental Rights in Education, bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade classes (aged 8-9). It argued that conversations around identity should be handled by parents, not schools.The White House has called the legislation “hateful” and something which targets “vulnerable students”.Disney has been criticised for not speaking out against the bill.

It’s been a rough first two years for Bob Chapek in Disney’s top job.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek is facing a major test of his leadership, after the company’s botched response to an anti-gay bill in Florida sparked a staff revolt among LGBTQ employees and their supporters.Chapek apologized to the staff on Friday, saying he should have been “a stronger ally.” But for some employees, who found the company’s silence on the bill profoundly alarming, the statement came too late.“This is a CYA [cover your ass] for Chapek — this is a weak statement,” one Disney staffer told Variety. “We should have gotten this apology on March 1, not weeks after — and after this bill was passed in Florida.”For Chapek, the apology capped a full week of attempted damage control.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek is in full damage control mode today as the blast radius from the company’s bungled response to Florida’s “discriminatory ‘Don’t Say Gay’ legislation threatens his newly minted reign at the House of Mouse.

first reported on Twitter by journalist Judd Legum of the newsletter Popular Information, strikes back against Chapek’s comments — in both a company-wide memo sent to Disney employees and subsequent remarks at the company’s annual shareholder meeting — purporting to stand with the company’s LGBTQ employees and the LGBTQ community more broadly.In the memo, issued earlier this week, Chapek defended the company’s decision not to issue a statement on the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill — a piece of “parental rights” legislation that seeks to keep parents informed of any changes in the way schools deal with their children, particularly with respect to affirming a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation without the parents’ knowledge.The bill explicitly bans teacher- or school-led discussions of LGBTQ-related topics up to the third grade, and requires that any conversations in older grades be age-appropriate and “developmentally appropriate.” But critics say that, in practice, given the pressure on teachers and the lack of support from administrators seeking to appease overly-sensitive or litigious parents, schools — and individual teachers — will preemptively censor student speech or LGBTQ-related content, even at the middle and high school levels. Chapek’s memo was issued in response to demonstrations by LGBTQ groups outside of Disney theme parks in Florida and California, as well as simmering discontent among employees, which stemmed not only from what critics characterized as a tepid response to the bill, but from an Orlando Sentinel report that Disney donated to every politician who sponsored and co-sponsored the legislation.In the internal memo, Chapek said the company “unequivocally” stands in support of its LGBTQ

Disney executives have censored gay affection in its films.In an open letter attributed to LGBTQIA+ animators and allies at the studio (obtained by Variety), it reads: “We have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were.“Nearly every moment of overtly gay affection is cut at Disney’s behest, regardless of when there is protest from both the creative teams and executive leadership at Pixar.”The letter is in response to Disney’s messaging around the recently passed legislation in Florida known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which blocks the discussion of LGBT+ identities in schools.Disney’s soft reaction to the legislation attracted widespread criticism.

The Human Rights Campaign is not taking money from Disney anymore.

For all intents and purposes, Disney is synonymous with Florida. That’s where Disney World is, and that’s kinda where everyone just assumes the corporation does most of its business.