Pixar's Lightyear Is Triggering the Latest Right-Wing Anti-LGBTQ+ Panic

[Celerity]

Conservatives are pushing to erase LGBTQ+ people from public life, banning talk of sexual orientation in schools, targeting drag performances, and more. The latest target: attacking the portrayal of a lesbian couple in the Toy Story spin-off out this week.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/disney-lightyear-anti-lgbtq-panic

https://archive.ph/VEQYk



The conservative outrage machine has picked its next target and it’s about to hit theatres: Disney-Pixar’s Lightyear, the Toy Story spin-off movie out Friday. “Disney works to push a ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’…Parents should keep that in mind before deciding whether to take their kids to see ‘Lightyear,’” tweeted Ben Shapiro, one of the most popular right-wing podcast hosts. His post included a screenshot from the upcoming animated movie that features two lesbian parents embracing each other. “Children are not adults. What may be appropriate for adults is not appropriate for children,” the podcaster continued. “That this must be said demonstrates that our society is in a state of moral collapse.”

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Shapiro’s portrayal of LGBTQ+ people and relationships as inherently lewd or pornographic, and thus, inappropriate for children, has become the norm among many conservatives. Over the past three months, the biggest names in conservative media have resurrected an all-out war against LGBTQ+ Americans, attempting to trigger a moral panic that is growing more extreme and more widespread with each passing week. As state legislatures tee up hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ proposals this year, a study from the Human Rights Campaign declared that 2022 could be the most anti-trans legislative year in history, per USA Today. This campaign has also escalated in conservative media; in March, far-right pundits began maligning educators who talk about gender identity or sexual orientation as “groomers” who seek to prey on schoolchildren. The revival of this age-old smear was adopted by some of the right’s most popular pundits and politicians. But the focus of these attacks has since shifted from schools, evolving into much broader attacks on LGBTQ+ people in all public spaces.

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In a Townhall column titled “When a Kiss Is Not Just a Kiss,” talk radio host Larry O’Connor pushed back against a Perez Hilton tweet noting that Lightyear is “banned in multiple countries over a gay kiss. CARTOONS KISSING, Y’ALL. That’s some commitment to homophobia.” “This is the standard response whenever objections are raised to the slow-motion degradation of our principles and values that we try to instil in our children,” O’Connor wrote. “Now, Disney has decided to warp its credibility with parents everywhere by letting us know that even its cartoons are no longer free from content that might be objectionable.” Likewise, The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher condemned Disney’s decision to include the Lightyear scene, accusing the company of appeasing a “woke mob that wants to sexualize children” and trying to “turn popular art into culture-war propaganda.” (At one point, Disney higher-ups reportedly decided to remove the scene in which the lesbian couple shares a kiss, but they reversed that decision in March in response to employee protests over anti-LGBTQ+ legislation being passed in Florida.)

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“It’s great that it’s back in the film,” actor Chris Evans, who voices the character Buzz Lightyear, told Vanity Fair at last week’s world premiere. “I think it’s a shame that it’s such a story. It should be more normalized, but I’m glad we are making those steps.” It’s not just movies. In a direct rebuttal to Pride Month celebrations taking place across the country, conservatives have also denounced LGBTQ+ spaces as innately depraved and unfit for children. “It’s OK to just say you don’t want kids to go to drag shows because you don’t want them to see men dressed up like women,” wrote conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey in a tweet, adding that “men pretending to be women should [not] be celebrated, especially by children.” Even Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene jumped in on the war against drag saying she was going to propose a bill making it illegal for children to be exposed to drag performances.

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[RandySF]

1. We're going this weekend.

[Mad_Machine76]

2. I wish

Their heads would LITERALLY explode.

[Initech]

3. Funny how they care far more about this shit than anyone else does.

The rest of us who don't subscribe to the Murdoch / MAGA cult will see it as no big deal.

[vercetti2021]

4. Well then this will make them really explode

To any lurkers. I'm a transwoman taking my cousin to see it Saturday! Oh no big bad me taking a kid to see an adorable movie! Oh noes! Fuck off freaks. Ya'll are so deep in the closet you found Narnia

[Quixote1818]

5. Chris Evans had a great response to all of this (video)

[roamer65]

6. This is what I'm reminded of when I see RW religious morons.

Sagan was right.

[GenThePerservering]

7. All this...

...because they don't have a single coherent idea on how to actually fix the REAL problems in this country.

[Initech]

8. Also all this because they watch Fox News and it has been scrambling their brains.

Not that their brains were really there to begin with.

[Celerity]

9. They do not want to fix most of the problems. They do not even see many of them as actual problems.

[IngridsLittleAngel]

11. They don't want to fix problems

They just get elected so they can ruin people's lives. Empty Greene didn't run for office to make this country better. She did it so she could hurt people.

The cruelty is the point.

[IngridsLittleAngel]

10. Ben Shapiro is a child... And STFU EMPTY GREENE

A 38 year old, overgrown toddler. A loudmouthed dipshit whose body somehow developed without puberty, but his brain clearly didn't. Somehow this asshat was given a loud microphone, one that he uses to whine about constantly.

"Children are not adults." Neither are you, Benny.

If you're okay with your kids seeing two heterosexuals embracing or kissing, then there's nothing different about letting them see two lesbians do so. Sure, maybe your kids will have questions. Guess what? You can either educate your kids on the fact that LGBTQ's exist... or you can be a stupid motherfucker like your parents were when they raised you, acting like everyone is just like you and you are the embodiment of normal and if you don't want LGBTQ's to exist... Well, make them not exist. If it was good enough for Hitler...

Gay people exist, Shapiro. Grow the fuck up and get over it.

Trans people exist, Shapiro. Grow the fuck up and get over it.

Seriously. Shapiro and the rest of his reich-wing crybabies need to grow up and grow a brain.

Leave us alone already, Shapiro. Better yet, just leave. Go take a trip on Elon Musk's stupid ship. Make it a one-way trip. Just leave Earth. No LGBTQ's in space.

As far as Empty Greene... SHUT THE FUCK UP. Seriously. SHUT THE EVERLOVING FUCK UP. Nobody asked for your bigotry and your Q bullshit. Most of the nation hates you. You represent one lousy district in Bumfuck, GA and yet you and the media think you're the fucking voice of the nation. I swear, it seems like you get more damned coverage than the Speaker of the House. And all you do is run your mouth with stupidity and hate.

Grow up and shut up you goddamned sentient scarecrow!

[BadgerKid]

12. Iirc, Giuliani dressed in drag once(that we know of)

Always projection and/or creating a group of people to get their hate on.