Will Disney ever show Gay couples in shows?

I think Disney will have a gay couple on TV, eventually. Perhaps even in a live-action movie. I doubt that they will have a gay couple in animation within my lifetime (i.e. in the next 0–30 years).

Disney, for all it’s warm fuzzyness is a for-profit company. Why risk the majority to pander to the minority. Disney is all sweetness and light, not all sweetness and life.

It’s hard to picture, but that’d be great if they did. However, I’m sure it would cause quite a stink among certain parents. I mean, people gave Cheerios hell for having an interracial couple on their commercial. What?! It was 2013, not 1950.

I haven’t found that kids are all that accepting, though. Kids tend to think anything different than what they see every day is wrong. I’ve heard plenty of kids do that, “A boy can’t date another boy! Ew!” thing and I always have to keep myself from rolling my eyes (I don’t have much patience with kids) because it’s pretty natural to reject things outside of your own reality until you’re taught otherwise. My sister is a lesbian and her daughter has made many negative comments about homosexuality even though no one has taught her that it’s wrong. She just doesn’t know any better, I guess. We try to tell her it’s okay to be gay, but she doesn’t seem to think so yet.

So, I think it would be great to expose kids to this stuff from the very beginning, so they’re not surprised when they see it later. But like I said, it’s hard to imagine Disney doing that any time soon.

Disney is very traditional, Americana, not-taking-any-risks-anytime-soon. Disney has Christmas stuff without apology. Not “holiday” but Christmas. I don’t anticipate anything “gay related” from Disney in the near future.

They already did

Disney also makes it big every year with Gay Days at their theme parks.

Great question. We have yet to see non-heterosexual relationships from any company, unless that relationship was key to the plot, at least that I’ve noticed.

I was struck by this when watching the newest Star Trek movies – the only relationships in it are hetero. I think sci-fi and other films set in the future should be the first to depict a world where different lifestyles are accepted as the norm – even if it’s just a same-sex couple in the background walking hand-in-hand. I see it more often in real life than I do in the media… isn’t that something?

sigh

Disney does not sanction Gay Days. It’s not a Disney-sanctioned event. It may exist, but Disney does not endorse it or sanction it. I’m sure Disney does not complain about the zillions that come in from gays and Gay Days but a search on the Disney site does not come up with any officially scheduled Gay Days.

@keobooks – Thanks for the link; I started typing my comment before it had posted. Another way to phrase my point is that since I see non-heterosexual couples every day in the real world, it seems conspicuously absent in the media. I am glad to see that it has already happened, and as they point out in the article – they didn’t make a big deal of it. That is what I am hoping to see across all media – where it just is this way and the plot doesn’t revolve around any “dilemma” relating to it.

@keobooks got here before me. ^_^

Also I forgot to mention a minor character in Frozen was clearly but very briefly shown to be part of a same sex couple’s family. When the supply store clerk shows off his family in the sauna, the other parent is also a man.

I think Disney has to be gay positive. I lived in Orlando and while I can’t prove it, I’d bet over half their staff (especially the performers) were gay.

@jca Disney is very traditional, Americana, not-taking-any-risks-anytime-soon.
So that’s why there haven’t been any innovative creation from Disney. Just those “same old” stories with “same old” plot…

I’ll say no. It isn’t natural or religiously blessed.

@kritiper Read the previous answers. It has already happened. In any case, being gay is very obviously natural and is not a human-only thing. And as for being blessed, it depends on the religion.

@livelaughlove21 “I haven’t found that kids are all that accepting, though. ”

I thought they handled it rather well.

Kids seem pretty accepting up until a certain age. And after that age gay is used as a “swear word” (That’s so GAY!) but they don’t really know what it means. When I was in the 5th grade, I remember snickering about some teacher who was a “gay-bee” but I thought it was about his effeminate manner. I didn’t really think about the “other men” part of being gay. I didn’t know what “lesbo” was, except that it was something you weren’t supposed to be.

When I met an openly gay man for the first time when I was 13 or so, I didn’t care about who he was interested in. But I also didn’t connect using gay as a swear word to his being gay. I probably would have said “Homophobia.. that’s so gay!” had I been born in this generation.

Anyway, I think kids are a lot more accepting than people think.

Regarding how accepting kids are, we had a same-sex couple move in up the street when my son was in elementary school – maybe 7 or 8 as I recall. I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation, but he did ask about them and I explained to him that some people ‘like’ people that are the same sex. He basically said, “Oh.” and went about his day. He was similarly unaffected when he found out that family members and close friends of the family are gay.

@uberbatman Sure, the kids they chose to put in that video did. I was just speaking from my experience. I’m not saying kids are homophobic – I’m saying many find it hard to accept things they don’t understand, and it’s up to the parents to teach them.

@hearkat I agree with you about how futuristic sci-fi media ought to show general and casual acceptance of homosexuality, and it is surprising how seldom they do. One that does it right is Doctor Who (and not just exclusively surrounding the prominently bi character Captain Jack), and I’ve always found it enormously refreshing.

@livelaughlove21 – Younger kids don’t really understand how straight couples work. They are more accepting than adults because they are still learning what’s acceptable in society. I do remember someone telling me when his dad tried to explain that “Uncle Joe likes boys and not girls” he was like “Cool. I don’t like girls either!” He was still in the “girls are yucky” stage and thought it was a great idea to live with a guy friend than a girl. It was only a few years later did he get it. But he just accepted the gay couple without a blip in his radar because he was brought up to see it as normal.

Kids can accept a LOT of things that adults can’t. That can be both good and bad. They are still flexible in their values. Adults tend not to be so flexible.

@keobooks Once again, I was only speaking from my own experience. All kids are not the same. Is it really that hard to believe that some kids might have the “ew!” response when they see two boys or two girls kissing if they’ve never seen it before? I never said they’d all react that way, but some do. Also, from my time studying child psychology/development, children go through stages where they’re very inflexible. They think in black and white terms, with no gray area. So how they react to new things depends heavily on their stage of development.

Hopefully my kids will be like the ones you’ve encountered that see nothing wrong with it.

You might want to check out The Top 10 Ambiguously Gay Disney Characters

@SavoirFaire It isn’t natural because you can’t procreate, and that is what Mother Nature intended. And the Bible (as well as the law) doesn’t accept it, as it involves (to a certain degree, but not in all instances,) sodomy.

@kritiper “Mother Nature” is an abstraction, not a real entity. It cannot intend anything. Too many animals engage in homosexual behavior for it to be plausibly referred to as unnatural. And in any case, drawing moral conclusions based on what is or is not natural is fallacious. As for the Bible, Christianity isn’t the only religion. As such, your original claim—which spoke of religion, not Christianity—is overly broad. Finally, “the law” is not a single thing either. Every country has its own law. In the US, anti-sodomy laws have been declared unconstitutional. Seventeen states have legalized same-sex marriage. It is illegal to kill somebody just because they are gay. It makes no sense, therefore, to say that US law is unequivocally against homosexuality.

Anyways, the original question was whether or not Disney will ever show gay couples in any of its television shows. As @keobooks pointed out above, however, they already have. As such, your “no” answer cannot possibly be correct no matter how much worn out bigotry you bring in to justify it. They’ve already done it. Predicting that they never will is already out of the question.

@SavoirFaire – Be that as it may, I stand by my answer.

@kritiper You stand by an answer that is demonstrably false without giving any further argument? That is straightforwardly irrational. Defend your premises or abandon them.

You said Disney will never show gay couples in any of its television shows. It already has. What, exactly, is there to gain by standing by your answer?

@SavoirFaire OK, so they may have been shown by Disney. (I have no proof.)
I have no need to defend how I feel about gays and their lifestyles much less abandon them willy-nilly at your behest.

@kritiper Here’s your proof. Even if it’s not “natural” (whatever that means), it’s part of the real world and, therefore, it should be on TV as if it were so.

When I originally read this question, I was thinking it was asking about gay couples in Disney’s animated movies, which is why I found it hard to imagine. I’m actually surprised this is the one and only gay couple filmed on a Disney non-animated series.

@kritiper I’d think you’d support gay couples since the Earth can only handle 500 million people.

Tee-hee-hee.

Just like kids have to learn racism, they have to learn other prejudices—like homophobia. Seriously. Even though kids get inflexible about some things, they are pretty open to family arrangements up until they are about tweens. If they see something they don’t recognize, they just assume it’s normal but they haven’t seen it before.

If little kids freaked out about everything they were unfamiliar with, they’d be constantly flipping out on almost a daily basis. I mean, should we not let people in wheelchairs out on the street because it might disturb little kids? Should men be forced to cut their hair short because kids will get confused seeing a man with a ponytail?