Apparently in response to new Florida legislation designed to protect young schoolchildren from homosexual grooming, a prominent homosexual advocacy group will now be enhancing its formal grading system for eight major film studio distributors, adding to pressure for them to industriously push gay-ness on the nation and to distance themselves from anyone who isn’t down for the gay cause.
GLAAD said that its annual Studio Responsibility Index, which quantifies LGBTQ representation in releases by Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, STX Films, United Artists Releasing, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios, and Warner Bros., will be released in summer 2022 with new sections documenting:
- Donations to anti-LGBTQ elected officials, candidates for office, and anti-LGBTQ Political Action Committees from a film studio and parent company.
- Public advocacy efforts from a film studio or parent company around pro-LGBTQ or anti-LGBTQ legislation.
- LGBTQ-inclusive ads or other public communications, especially outside of Pride month.
- Actions taken to support a studio’s LGBTQ-inclusive titles internationally. Recent examples include: in 2021, Marvel’s film Eternals was pulled from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait after Disney reportedly refused to cut a same-sex kiss and in 2019, Paramount spoke out against censorship of LGBTQ content in Rocketman in Russia.
- These new topics will be considered as part of the grades that GLAAD assigns to the studios.
GLAAD will track and report on these topics each year.
The change in the annual Studio Responsibility Index comes as LGBTQ advocates including GLAAD have been pushing hard for The Walt Disney Company to take some kind of action against Florida’s new law barring discussion of LGBTQ topics with young children in kindergarten through third grade classrooms.
This month, after the bill passed and following efforts from gay Disney employee groups, Disney CEO Bob Chapek finally issued a statement against the bill. Disney also joined over 170 businesses in signing on to a letter opposing efforts to keep homosexual activism away from very young children.
