Disney Opens Fairy Tale Weddings To Gay Couples

[shinerbock]

Originally Posted by TPASIGEP

Good for them! At least they'll be making money off one of the fastest growing income groups.

On a side note...it always amazes me that ignorant people have this innate desire to stick their noses in anyone elses business.

There are plenty of other things to worry about in this world.

<off soap box now>

On a side note, I love how people automatically deem those don't agree with them to be "ignorant".

[UGAalum94]

I'm not addressing the issue of gay marriage with the first part at all:

But if in the past Disney required a valid marriage license, and now they are being more inclusive, can you just have a "play" wedding there now? Can a girl with really indulgent parents throw her a sweet sixteen in the form of a Fairy Tale Wedding?

On to gay marriage sort of:

I sometimes think that the state should get out of the marriage business all together and rewards whatever benefits it sees in marriage on couples actually doing those things: raising a family, etc, in terms of couples in civil unions.

As long as heterosexuals are represented by the Elizabeth Taylors and Brittney Spears of the world and bizarrely Michael Jackson too, it's hard to make a claim of the moral high road for heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the law.

Now, I think churches ought to be able to restrict the sacrament of marriage in any way they want, but it's hard to figure out what valid interest the state has in the biological sexes of the couple. (Heterosexual couples use artificial insemination to conceive and sometimes surrogates to carry the child, so procreation as a state interest, or whatever, is kind of problematic. Do you think I read to much Andrew Sullivan?)

[BetteDavisEyes]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

But if in the past Disney required a valid marriage license, and now they are being more inclusive, can you just have a "play" wedding there now? Can a girl with really indulgent parents throw her a sweet sixteen in the form of a Fairy Tale Wedding?

I don't know about a "play" wedding b/c I'm not sure exactly what that entails but I was at Disneyland with a friend who was considering getting married and found out that though there are some technicalities involved, you can have a Sweet 16, Quincanera, or Anniversary party and have everything a wedding does except for the wedding ceremony obviously. You can even get the coach which if I recall correctly, it's around $2000 to use it.

[shinerbock]

I agree that it would be much better without government sanctioned marriages. Unfortunately that ship has failed.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by shinerbock

Unfortunately that ship has failed.

I like this expression: the failed/sailed substitution. Nice.

I don't know that it's beyond fixing. Since more young folks don't seem to mind tinkering with traditional marriage, I think shifting everyone to civil unions might be only slightly less likely than adding same sex marriage, but it might be wishful thinking.

[UGAalum94]

I don't really know what a play wedding entails either, but I was thinking of the funny cases in which people who saw themselves as permanently single threw themselves wedding-like parties. No one I've really known has ever done this, but I've read funny news articles about them.

Thanks for answering my question: the answer is that they already could.

[TPASIGEP]

Originally Posted by shinerbock

On a side note, I love how people automatically deem those don't agree with them to be "ignorant".

OK...first off, I wasn't referring to you, but was commenting about people in the article that think boycotting Disney is really going to impact this decision. It didn't work in the past.

Also, you're right, a different opinion is not ignorance, an uniformed one is.

[UGAalum94]

From the article:

"In 2005, Southern Baptists ended an eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. for violating 'moral righteousness and traditional family values.'"

And now, Disney is allowing people not officially allowed by law to marry in many places to go through the wedding event they offer.

If Southern Baptists were actually following through on the boycott through 2005, do you suppose the decision to offer the weddings to same sex couples will be just be ignored? Maybe it will, and Disney seems committed enough to their beliefs to be firm anyway.

But while certainly the first point of a boycott is to change the practice of company who you are boycotting, but it can also reinforce the resolve and unity of the people engaged in the boycott as a matter of principle.

While I don't care one way or the other about the parties available at Disney at all, I'm not sure that it's ignorant to boycott. Unlikely to change the policy maybe, but that may not be the only point.

Even though I'm not bothered by Disney's decision politically or socially, I'm not really celebrating that Disney found another way to make money. It's hard for me as a matter of taste to get excited about anyone having a Disney wedding, (shouldn't you have gotten over that when you were twelve?), and the silliness of it is compounded by it having no legal significance.

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

From the article:

"In 2005, Southern Baptists ended an eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. for violating 'moral righteousness and traditional family values.'"

And now, Disney is allowing people not officially allowed by law to marry in many places to go through the wedding event they offer.

If Southern Baptists were actually following through on the boycott through 2005, do you suppose the decision to offer the weddings to same sex couples will be just be ignored? Maybe it will, and Disney seems committed enough to their beliefs to be firm anyway.

But while certainly the first point of a boycott is to change the practice of company who you are boycotting, but it can also reinforce the resolve and unity of the people engaged in the boycott as a matter of principle.

While I don't care one way or the other about the parties available at Disney at all, I'm not sure that it's ignorant to boycott. Unlikely to change the policy maybe, but that may not be the only point.

Even though I'm not bothered by Disney's decision politically or socially, I'm not really celebrating that Disney found another way to make money. It's hard for me as a matter of taste to get excited about anyone having a Disney wedding, (shouldn't you have gotten over that when you were twelve?), and the silliness of it is compounded by it having no legal significance.

If after eight years, a boycott doesn't hamper Disney, I fail to see how the Southern Baptists' continuation of said boycott would have a) prevented this or b) made anyone at Disney care what the SB's think.


To your second post, Disney has been very pro-gay for a long time now. If you're just now figuring that ouw you AREN'T worrying about the politcal implications of the policies of the businesses you frequent. Their allowal of these ceremonies really does jack shit politcally. It's just fun and lets them waste humongous amounts of money equally with straight people.

They're not issuing marriage licenses to couples who cannot legally marry under state law.

[shinerbock]

Centaur, I completely anticipated we'd disagree on that.

[Rudey]

The real question is what kind of trash gets married at Disney?

-Rudey

[DeltAlum]

Originally Posted by Rudey

The real question is what kind of trash gets married at Disney?

-Rudey

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

If after eight years, a boycott doesn't hamper Disney, I fail to see how the Southern Baptists' continuation of said boycott would have a) prevented this or b) made anyone at Disney care what the SB's think.


To your second post, Disney has been very pro-gay for a long time now. If you're just now figuring that ouw you AREN'T worrying about the politcal implications of the policies of the businesses you frequent. Their allowal of these ceremonies really does jack shit politcally. It's just fun and lets them waste humongous amounts of money equally with straight people.

They're not issuing marriage licenses to couples who cannot legally marry under state law.

I think you're kind of missing the point I was trying to make but maybe I was unclear.

First off, I don't care what Disney does one way or the other. I haven't been to Disney since I was six and it has nothing to do with their policies about gay people. On the other hand, letting gay folks have pretend marriages there doesn't make it worth a trip as far as I'm concerned either.

Yes, I know that Disney has viewed as pro-gay by the Southern Baptist for a long time (are they really especially pro-gay or are they simply equal?) But consider that the Baptist certainly must realize that they couldn't affect the Disney policies, and yet, choosing as a group to decide not to support the business reinforces the group belief and group unity. It's not really about hurting Disney; it's about refusing to say, "Oh well, even though Disney doesn't share our values, we'll keep going there. Let's give them our money anyway." It's about the Southern Baptists, not about Disney.

If you believe a business is acting in a way that reinforces immoral behavior (and I am not prepared to say that's what the Disney wedding stuff does, by any stretch, but I think the SBs will), do you continue to go to that business? I tend to think that people of principle refuse to go to that business even if they don't expect the business to change the behavior because of their boycott.

I was under the impression that to end the boycott in 2005 some fences were mended with the Southern Baptists, and I was surprised considering that I expect actual legal same sex marriage to be pretty much right around the corner, that Disney felt like they needed to be out in front with their pretend weddings when they could wait, keep the same policy, and avoid pissing a big "family" group off.

(I'd have to do more research, but think about previous sponsors of the Boy Scouts who dropped them over BSA's refusal to amend their policies about homosexual members. Did you expect them to revisit the issue in a few years if the boycott didn't work or did you expect them to only sponsor the group again if they changed their policies?

In a non homosexually centered example, if one were say, a free trade coffee supporter, would you expect such a person to only boycott drinking non-free trade coffee in so far as the boycott was actually successful and freely give in to the purchase of non-free trade coffee if it turned out that someplace you wanted to go didn't response to you boycott? In good conscience this person could say, "well it didn't work, whatever"? )

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Alphagamuga

I think you're kind of missing the point I was trying to make but maybe I was unclear.

First off, I don't care what Disney does one way or the other. I haven't been to Disney since I was six and it has nothing to do with their policies about gay people. On the other hand, letting gay folks have pretend marriages there, doesn't make it worth a trip as far as I'm concerned either.

Yes, I know that Disney has viewed as pro-gay by the Southern Baptist for a long time (are they really especially pro-gay or are they simply equal?) But consider that the Baptist certainly must realize that they couldn't affect the Disney policies, and yet, choosing as a group to decide not to support the business reinforces the group belief and group unity. It's not really about hurting Disney; it's about refusing to say, "Oh well, even though Disney doesn't share our values, we'll keep going there. Let's give them our money anyway." It's about the Southern Baptists, not about Disney.

If you believe a business is acting in a way that reinforces immoral behavior (and I am not prepared to say that's what the Disney wedding stuff does, by any stretch, but I think the SBs will), do you continue to go to that business? I tend to think that people of principle refuse to go to that business even if they don't expect the business to change the behavior because of their boycott.

I was under the impression that to end the boycott in 2005 some fences were mended with the Southern Baptists, and I was surprised that considering that I expect actual legal same sex marriage to be pretty much right around the corner, that Disney felt like they needed to be out in front with their pretend weddings when they could wait, keep the same policy, and avoid pissing a big "family" group off.

They're pro-equality which to some people means pro-gay. They've provided same-sex partner benefits for a while now and have hosted some sort of gaydays at Disney. They're not hiding it.

I'm saying that clearly Disney did not care what the SB's though during the 8 year boycott, which apparently did little more than provide Disney with free advertisement, as eight years later they had not changed their policies or actions.

Even if it is only about money to Disney (and it's always at least partially about money) I'm not sure why they'd care about pissing off a demographic whose non-attendance didn't affect their bottom line for eight years. They're anticipating making more money from this change.

[shinerbock]

If the majority of people who attended southern baptist churches really participated in the boycott, it might have mattered.