During a staff meeting on Florida’s recent enactment of the Parental Rights in Education bill, an executive producer at Disney said she was advancing a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” to insert queerness into children’s animation.
Latoya Raveneau, executive producer for Disney Television Animation, talked about how the studio’s treatment of her progressive ideas defied her negative expectations of the company, in a video obtained by journalist Christopher Rufo. Instead of vetoing her pitches for LGBTQ-friendly Easter eggs or overt references in her series, Disney gladly accepted and included them, she claimed.
“In my little pocket of Proud Family Disney TVA, the showrunners were super welcoming . . . to my not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” she said. “Maybe it was that way in the past, but I guess something must have happened . . . and then like all that momentum that I felt, that sense of ‘I don’t have to be afraid to have these two characters kiss in the background.’ I was just, wherever I could, adding queerness. . . . No one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me.”
She said that when she joined, she assumed Disney would try to keep LGBTQ elements out of content for younger audiences, but she was pleasantly surprised.
“I love Disney’s content. I grew up watching all of the classics. They have been a huge informative part of my life, but at the same time, I worked at small studios most of my career, and I’d heard whispers. I’d heard things like, ‘They won’t let you show this in a Disney show.’ So I was a little sus when I started, but then my experience was bafflingly the opposite of what I had heard,” she said.
Raveneau is executive producer on the upcoming Disney Junior musical series, “Rise Up, Sing Out,” featuring the music of The Roots, which “tackles the subject of coming together to fight racism and celebrate black culture!,” according to her LinkedIn profile. She is also director on the upcoming animated series, “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder.”
“Latoya is a rare and uniquely talented person who elevates everything she touches, and her creative sensibilities span stories for preschool, kids, families and adults,” Meredith Roberts, SVP/general manager, Television Animation, at Disney Branded Television, told Deadline earlier this month.
Raveneau’s leaked comments came out Tuesday, the day after Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill by critics, which prohibits the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation to children in kindergarten through third grade.
Disney’s leadership condemned the legislation and attempted to lobby DeSantis to kill it, but he refused to budge. A group of California Disney employees staged a walkout last week to protest the measure, wearing rainbow colors, holding signs with pro-LGBTQ slogans, and shouting, “Say Gay,” as they marched down the street.
The governor slammed the company for its hypocrisy in pushing domestic social-justice causes while conducting business in China with the blessing of the Chinese Communist Party, a regime notorious for human-rights abuses relating to the Uyghur Muslims, Hong Kong, Tibet, etc.
DeSantis told supporters in Boca Raton earlier this month that Florida’s policies must be based on the “best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musings of woke corporations.”
