Penna Dexter

Bob Chapek, CEO of the Walt Disney Company had a bad week recently. Unlike his predecessor, Robert Iger, he prefers to stay out of politics. What happened last week shows how difficult that can be in the current woke corporate environment.

Disney’s most famous property is in Florida and Bob Chapek didn’t mean to get in a public fight with the state’s Governor Ron DeSantis. But it happened.

Florida’s legislators passed a popular bill that prohibits classroom instruction on sexuality and gender identity before 4^th grade. Critics call this the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and are pushing the false claim that the law would prevent children with same-sex parents from being allowed to draw pictures of their families or talk about them in class.

The Parental Rights in Education bill is a common-sense pushback against the Left’s indoctrination in schools.  One provision requires that schools notify parents and acquire their consent for children to receive health care services offered on campus. Another section prohibits school districts from requiring that teachers keep secrets from parents about health decisions, including matters involving gender identity.

Governor DeSantis said in a video that “companies that have made a fortune off being family-friendly… should understand that parents of young kids do not want this injected into their kid’s kindergarten classroom. They do not want their first-graders to go and be told they can choose an opposite gender.”

By week’s end, Bob Chapek was begging forgiveness from disgruntled Disney employees for not speaking out against the bill. He also announced that Disney would renounce all political giving and pledged to send $5 million to LGBT groups.

Bob Chapek’s original instincts to stay out of this debate were correct and other CEO’s should take notice. As Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins wisely suggests, “Maybe the reality is finally starting to sink in that corporate America is on the wrong side of the political debate by being in the political debate at all.”