GAY AGENDA SERIES

What constitutes “classroom instruction” is unclear, but many fear it could include any mention of gay or transgender people, including students’ families.

It has an enforcement mechanism similar to the recent Texas abortion bounty law, allowing individual parents to sue for damages and recoup attorney fees if they win. 1557, the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for kids below fourth grade, and any such instruction that is not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for older students. The most notorious of these new laws is Florida’s H.B. “I think there’s an opportunity to do the reporting, to build the narrative, much in the same way as critical race theory,” he said. He believes there’s a lot of latent alarm among parents over changing ideas about gender, and he intends to tap into it. But in recent months, both he and the movement he helped catalyze have turned their attention to gender and sexual identity. Until recently, Rufo was best known for his work mobilizing the right against critical race theory. “Perhaps the lesson that they’re learning - and certainly the lesson that they should be learning - is that they should stay out of politics,” he said. When I spoke to Rufo on Thursday, he was frank about wanting to punish Disney for giving in to employee pressure to oppose the Florida law. Raveneau has landed in the middle of a renascent moral panic, one that combines elements of QAnon with old tropes about gay predators. “Disney isn’t just grooming children with radical sexual propaganda - now they’re bragging about it,” said a writer for The Federalist. This is propaganda for grooming,” hissed Fox’s Laura Ingraham on Wednesday. Then the conservative activist Christopher Rufo stepped in. There’s been some reporting about the groundbreaking nature of the show in the entertainment press, but as far as I can see, it hadn’t caused much if any controversy. The show’s main character, Penny Proud, has a flamboyant gay friend who has to deal with bullying, and another character has gay dads.

The results of Raveneau’s agenda seem sweetly anodyne.

GAY AGENDA SERIES

Instead, she said, everyone she’s worked with has welcomed her “not at all secret gay agenda,” letting her add “queerness” to the animated show she directs, a revival of an early-aughts series called “ The Proud Family.” On a video call, Raveneau spoke about her initial apprehension about taking a job at Disney, fearing she wouldn’t be allowed to include gay characters in the projects she worked on. Raveneau stepped up to defend the company’s queer friendliness, only to become a national object of right-wing fury and disgust. Inside Disney, there had been considerable anger that the company, one of the state’s largest employers, had donated to politicians behind the bill and hadn’t done more to fight it. An executive producer at Disney, she was a speaker at a recent virtual all-hands company meeting about Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

I don’t know Latoya Raveneau, but I feel terrible for her.

Gay agenda