I spent a career in journalism, but I’m not above gossip. So here’s a juicy bit: Goofy is gay. Yes, that pal of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck? Gay.
Or he might be. I don’t actually have any authoritative sources on this story. Kind of like the people who say the 2020 election was stolen.
Now, it is wrong to “out” somebody who doesn’t want to be open about their sexual orientation. But it’s probably OK, because Goofy’s no more real than the Easter bunny — who might also be gay, I think, by the way. But it would be sweet justice (don’t you think?) if the homophobes of Florida and elsewhere found out that Mickey’s sidekick, like a lot of men of his generation, has all along been faking his just-one-of-the-guys act.
This notion is only in my imagination. But it comes after news that Ron DeSantis and the Disney corporation have settled a lawsuit to end a two-year battle that arose from Florida’s swampland of homophobia.
You’ll recall that Governor DeSantis, and Florida’s Republican-controlled state legislature, decided that conversations about sexual orientation and gender identity are too upsetting for youngsters of single-digit age to even bear mentioning in schools – and that just using the wrong words in addressing the topic with any age of student could get a teacher or a school district sued. You could only conclude that the politicians think sex and gender are more appalling than other topics that they haven’t outlawed from classroom discussion — maybe like homicide, rape and cynical political opportunism.
Okay, I just threw in that last one there to be clever, because no teacher is going to try to teach schoolchildren why some politicians are turning democracy into a sideshow, though that’s clearly an upsetting reality that kids ought to learn to cope with by the time they become adults. Otherwise, they might grow up to emulate Ron DeSantis, a brilliant guy — a top student at Yale and at Harvard Law — who is one of those politicians regularly demonstrating that ambition unmoored from ethical standards can lead even smart people to stoop to destructive behavior. Like Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of Upstate New York. More on her in a moment.
But we digress. This is top of mind, as I was saying, because the other day Disney and DeSantis settled their lawsuit over control of a special tax district that includes Disney World. This arose after Disney had the temerity to criticize that Florida “Don’t Say Gay Law” – which targeted classroom discussion of LGBTQ themes. That led DeSantis to end Disney’s ability to self-govern Disney World, which could have left the corporation’s $17 billion development plan in Florida subject to the whims of ambitious politicians.
We don’t have details of the settlement, but it we know it was made possible because the state retreated just a bit – clarifying that the “Don’t Say Gay Law” only applies to formal classroom instruction. That is, a teacher can’t be prosecuted if a kid of gay parents talks about mommy and mommy or their two daddies in a classroom, which the Florida law seemed to make possible.
For Disney, this fight was in part about money; for Florida’s increasingly right-wing state government, it was about control of what schools teach – since Florida also is where teachers can get in trouble for honest instruction about America’s slaveholding past. But it’s really about whether we are truly willing to meet our neighbors on each other’s turf, and honor who they are: Gay or straight; old or young; white, Black, brown, indigenous; whoever we are.
And it’s also about whether humans are able to adapt as they learn more — in this case, by weighing science over ancient prejudices.
Take gender, for example, like the declaration of Congresswoman Stefanik that, in her words, “you’re either born a biological man or a biological woman.” Science reveals that to be flatly untrue: Four genetic variants lead to people being born in neither specific gender, and there are other biologic and hormonal variations that delineate a person from being clearly one gender or another. What value is served by Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, ignoring that science? Why would we want to cause pain to gender-fluid or non-binary people by implying that even discussing their reality is threatening to the well-being of children?
The same goes for sexuality. Genetics play a role in whether a person is drawn to same-sex partners, research confirms, as do a lot of other factors. Gayness, then, is a natural part of our diversity as a species. So says science. So who benefits by trying to outlaw instruction about that fact?
Not kids, certainly. Fortunately, in recent years, kids have met a string of characters in Disney movies that seem to be gay, from Lefou in “Beauty and the Beast,” to Elsa in “Frozen.” Elsa is quite something: a Disney princess who never sought a handsome prince. At the climax of “Frozen,” she sings, heroically, “Let it go, let it go — can’t hold it back anymore,” in what is often invoked as a lesbian anthem. “Here I stand, and here I stay — let the storm rage on,” she insists.
And so it shall, lawsuit settlement or no – so that, finally, the lesson we give all children in the 21st century will be one of determination and pride, rather than of yielding to the eagerness of some politicians to fuel their ambitions on the fears of others.
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.