Florida Governor Ron DeSantis traveled to Nevada this week to stump for a Republican Senate candidate. Speaking at a Nevada bar, DeSantis rattled off all the culture war talking points he’s come to rest his entire political career on, including accusing Disney of trying to “inject sexuality” into “programming for very young kids.”
“And so my wife and I, you know we were thinking to ourselves, you know when we were young you could watch cartoons without having to worry,” DeSantis said. “Now, parents have to sit there and worry about, what are they trying to inject in? What type of ideology are they trying to pursue? And that is wrong.”
“When we were young, you could watch cartoons without having to worry.”
— The Recount (@therecount) April 28, 2022
— Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) again baselessly claims Disney is injecting sexuality into cartoons while stumping for Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt pic.twitter.com/7FrKGGjzLT
This is nonsense. Once again, we have a Republican demonstrating a total inability to see the mere existence of LGBTQ+ people as anything but inherently sexual. But romance (which is not the same as sex!) has always been a part of cartoons and children’s programming.
Take, for example, the conservative uproar over the news that there will be a same-sex kiss in the upcoming Toy Story spin-off Lightyear. People have been up in arms over this, insisting that in it’s inappropriate to have sex in kid’s movies and claiming, as DeSantis is, that this is something new. But if they’re going to view a kiss or romance in general as being too sexual for a Toy Story movie, then why haven’t they been saying that for the last 17 years?
Romance, love, crushes, attraction, and intimacy have always been a part of these stories. There is no reason to have a different reaction to seeing those things apply to LGBTQ+ characters except straight-up bigotry.
As for DeSantis’ claim that things were different, better, and safer, when he was a kid, that’s ridiculous. This man cannot handle a nonbinary character or a chaste kiss between two women popping up in a kid’s show or movie, but this is the kind of stuff he likely grew up on:
— HatsforBaTS (@hats_for_bats) April 28, 2022
This is from 1945. https://t.co/dWolRSeHtu
— KB (@sorrykb) April 28, 2022
A cartoon from my toddler days that my parents were fine with me watching. Hell, they watched it with me. pic.twitter.com/MdzNhVQqCU
— Tony Walters (@T_Dub1010) April 29, 2022
Yeah, those wholesome cartoons of our parents’ youth. pic.twitter.com/5mZOwE1m1u
— Michael Zupon (@mzupon29) April 29, 2022
Ah yes, the very clean and inoffensive cartoons of the past. A simpler, wildly racist, time we all had. pic.twitter.com/T15fH942K8
— StrangestDaze (@Cellularlinks) April 28, 2022
In response to the video of DeSantis’s speech, “Pepé Le Pew” was trending on Twitter Friday. That is a character who was so sexually enamored with a female cat that he repeatedly tried to force himself on her and that was the entire premise of every episode. Plus, when the character was cut from the recent Space Jam, a lot of these same people who can’t handle a simple same-sex kiss because they think it’s too sexual criticized Pepé’s removal as an example of “cancel culture” and “wokeness” run amok.
But sure Ron, it’s cartoons now that have the problem.
(image: James Gilbert/Getty Images, Warner Bros)
