The Southern Baptist Convention modeled the Disney boycott. Now, it’s offering discounted tickets.

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Disney employees ask for more LGBTQ support during nationwide protests Disney employees around the country called on their company to show more support for LGBTQ employees. Patrick Colson-Price, USA TODAY

Gay rights are once again the driver in a protest against Disney — a movement modeled by the Southern Baptist Convention 25 years ago.  “This is not an attempt to bring the Disney company down, but to bring Southern Baptists up to the moral standard of God,” read a resolution approved by Southern Baptists in 1997 that triggered an eight-year boycott against Disney. In what was, and still is, a rare action for the Nashville-based SBC, the boycott sought to stand against a company seen as promoting ideas inconsistent with the denomination’s views on sexuality.

Now, Disney is back at the forefront of a heated debate over LGBTQ rights and Southern Baptists are finding themselves in a remarkably different position than a quarter-century ago. Conservatives are  attacking Disney for publicly opposing Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Meanwhile, the SBC is offering discounted Disneyland tickets for families traveling to Anaheim this June for the denomination’s big annual meeting. 

“It’s something that makes you see the broader context,” Luke Holmes, SBC historian and pastor in Oklahoma, said in an interview about the Disneyland ticket discount and the history of the boycott.

A committed fight

The SBC’s boycott officially started in 1997 after the convention monitored Disney products for a year.  The convention was concerned about Disney’s decision to provide insurance benefits to employees with same-sex partners, and allowing organizations to host “Gay Days” at Disney parks, according to an 87-page booklet published in 1998 titled “Send a Message to Mickey.” Disney had also acquired the ABC network, which aired shows featuring gay and lesbian figures, such as Ellen DeGeneres.

“Disney’s empire has more recently been characterized as the Tragic Kingdom because of the growing exposure of the dark side of the Disney media giant,” read “Send a Message to Mickey,” obtained from the Southern Baptist Historical Library & Archives.  The boycott received widespread criticism from LGBTQ rights groups and support from other conservative Christian organizations. More than a dozen major organizations followed the SBC in the boycott, including three other denominations — Assemblies of God, Presbyterian Church in America and Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee — the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, American Family Association and Focus on the Family, among others. 

Recent news on LGBTQ rights: Tennessee among states with least support for LGBTQ rights, study finds The convention’s public policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, was fully committed. It produced a 30-minute video explaining the boycott, a website, fact sheets, bulletin inserts, and a template letter for Southern Baptists to send to Disney, according to “Send a Message to Mickey.”

“As a result of your company’s radical shift away from a wholesome, pro-family philosophy, my family did not spend the following amount of your products this month…” read the template letter.  To clear up any confusion about where to invest, “Send a Message to Mickey” lists each of Disney’s 194 total holdings, subsidiaries, and print products the company advertised through at the time.  “The fact that they chose to bring it up again shows the fact that it was something serious,” Holmes said. “Taking stands was not a new thing for the SBC.

But it certainly got more publicity than anything else.”

The end of one protest and the start of a new one

Following decisions from the American Family Association and Focus on the Family to end their participation in the Disney boycott in mid-2005, the SBC followed suit. As was the case when the boycott began, the SBC ended the protest when voting delegates at the annual meeting, called messengers, approved a resolution.  Disney never publicly said the boycott caused it to change any of its policies, and the boycott’s financial impact remains unclear. 

But Holmes said he believes it still had a lasting effect. “It reminded Southern Baptists that we are a convention that believes in the inerrancy of scripture and seeks to apply that to every area of life, even to our entertainment and the things we consume,” Holmes said. Yet, the idea has a more literal appeal recently following the passage of a new law in Florida that places limits on classroom instruction about gender and sexuality. Following pressure from employees and celebrities, Disney said after Florida Gov.

Ron DeSantis signed the bill the company hopes the courts strike the law down. Conservative pundits and DeSantis struck back, mocking Disney for being too “woke.”  Celebrities put pressure on Disney: Raven-Symone and ‘Raven’s Home’ cast walk off Disney set to protest ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill

SBC conservatives plan for June meeting: More conservative Southern Baptist wing backs nominees for top offices as part of political push More conservative Southern Baptists chimed in. “We cannot, in good conscience and Christian witness, encourage fellow Southern Baptists to support a company bent on this ideological discourse,” read a news release on Friday from the Conservative Baptist Network, an advocacy group in the SBC. 

One conservative website that publishes material about the SBC celebrated the former SBC boycott in a recent post.   Holmes is doubtful the SBC will resurrect a boycott. “It’s not the nature of the convention like this to make such broad statements like that and that may be one of the reasons it hasn’t been brought up again,” he said. But Holmes acknowledged he could be wrong.

It depends on what’s more appealing to Southern Baptists this June: the resolutions or the rides.

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean.

Reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter @liamsadams. 

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