*Bump* Who Remembers Spin and Marty? "yippee yay yippie yo!"

*I'm GenX, but we had the record, and ... I played it. (It was so sad in those final verses when summer camp ended.)

...Big businesses are increasingly being forced to take sides, and the realities of doing business with modern-day consumers and employees are increasingly pushing some companies to side with the L.G.B.T.Q. community.  There is no better illustration of what is happening, and what is changing, than in Orlando, Fla. 

When the presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida last year attacked the Walt Disney Company for criticizing his anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation, he probably believed he had secured a quick political win. Instead, Disney engaged in an all-out war, most recently suing him and pulling out of a planned $1 billion development that would have brought thousands of jobs to the area. 

Suddenly, he was fending off charges that he is anti-business — an image that Donald Trump, his main opponent for the Republican presidential nomination, is happily promoting.  Why would one of America’s largest corporate entities, particularly one lacking a long history of taking grand positions on social issues, go to the mat for L.G.B.T.Q. rights? 

Because it has no alternative.  

The relationship between Disney and the L.G.B.T.Q. community started before the company was aware of that relationship. In the 1930s, when being lesbian or gay was considered a mental illness, many gay and lesbian people identified with the quirkiness of Disney’s first star. Lesbians called secret get-togethers Mickey Mouse parties, and a gay bar in Berlin called itself Mickey Mouse.  As Disney grew, more L.G.B.T.Q. fans identified with characters like Ferdinand the Bull and Peter Pan or appreciated the campy flair of villains such as Captain Hook and Maleficent. 

Misfit characters who eventually found acceptance for being different gave many L.G.B.T.Q. individuals solace and hope. Queer youth signed up to work at Disneyland and Disney World as employee “cast members” and found a community. In the 1980s and ’90s, the attachment was evidenced by the wealth of Disney imagery on panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.  

Based in part on interviews I’ve done with current and former Disney employees, I believe the Disney corporation in the 1980s decided it was fiscally viable to reach out to the L.G.B.T.Q. fan base. Working with a number of openly L.G.B.T.Q. artists, including Howard Ashman and Elton John, queer subtext in Disney culture quietly became more visible. (Ursula in “The Little Mermaid,” for example, was modeled on the female impersonator Divine.) Yet the references remained under the radar — ones that queer viewers could recognize and appreciate but that would most likely go over the heads of conservative families...

~Sean Griffin, NYT

------------------

The best businesses serve multiples.  The more inclusive and welcoming to all you can be, the better.  Don't pit parenting people with children against the adults who have distinctly different needs that the kids.  There's room for everyone, always has been in this Small World we share...

You cannot make the world "safe" for children, but you can work to welcome children and educate parents about how to put the social needs of their kids first and plan to protect them.  Educating them and letting them slowly grow into participating in the adult world is the first step...

Baby steps.  I think parents were taught to put the needs of their own children first, and even restructure economic expectations so that more children are raised with parents in the home, and not by paid caregivers who have no longtime connection past payday with a child, then the children would grow up secure in their own worlds, with their own childhoods fully intact, playing outdoors more with other children in their own communities.

Then, instead of working parents dragging little ones behind them "pulling their kids up" (or networking them in, if you prefer) we might actually structure a system where the most competitive people of the future -- our best and brightest clocking in the game  -- can compete their way up and in, instead of losers like Hunter Biden making millions at the top with the no-fail protections currently built in.

If you look at America today, and our notable failings, it's because too many people doing too little and being overpaid to do it think they have all the answers because they are in "leadership". Nevermind that they inherited the role or aren't even pulling their own weight, nevermind doing the work and helping the people they are paid to do.

Often on the taxpayer dime.  (Funny how government work often runs in the family like that.)

Independence is what will define the best Americans in the days to come, I think.  Knowing how to do more with less, and learning to love where you live, and the people in the community that surround you.  Otherwise, you're just carving out "safe places" and grabbing as much as you can today to "provide" for the deadweights coming up that you'll likely have to carry -- in one way or another -- for years to come.

Do we want to raise a nation of Hunter Bidens, really?  Is that the best we can do with what we've got here now? I don't think so, and I spend a lot of my free time thinking on these things...

(funny how a lot of people at the top today seize on cheap entertainment as their topic of choice, anything to keep them from thinking independently or otherwise opining on anything important to reforming society today... They're not real leaders, you see. and they don't seem to enjoy the work they've been hired to do.)

------------

* Part of the reason you can't address the needs of the people today is because the boomers who were in power for so long, continually obsess about the past instead of talking about the present, or what needs to be done in the future.  These people are not leaders and have no place redressing the sins of their pasts at the cost to the Youth of today.

Leave the kids alone. They'll be fine working it out without your adult influence, and neverending "help". It's one thing not to let your own boys and girls grow up, boomers. It's another to try and vault them over others, without your rich connection, who are actually working to change society today...

And yes, that means some of the losers who cannot compete without their parents money or help, will lose and live lesser lives than their parents, who weren't confident enough in their skills to let them grow up independently.