Time for a little nuance during “Pride” month.
I am pro-LGBT rights, pro-gay marriage. But I’m calling a timeout on faux Pride.
Disney Pixar’s newest animated kids movie “Lightyear” has a lesbian kiss in it. This won’t stop me from bringing my son to see it. He loves Toy Story movies.
Do I find this kiss morally offensive? No. Gay couples kiss all the time.
Do I find it inappropriate? No, not really.
Do I find it obligatory and pretentious? Absolutely. And, well, I’m just over it.
Remember when there were same-race couples in commercials?
Commercials now must signal a company’s support of diversity with mixed-race, same-sex couples and trans characters, it seems, always.
It’s not distasteful, just perfunctory and insincere.
I remember there were absolutely no black characters in the original Doctor Seuss and Curious George books, and in TV shows like “Leave it to Beaver,” as if people of different skin color didn’t exist then.
In the same way white heterosexuals don’t exist now.
The wokeness of corporate America is so forced and lacking genuineness, it has grown ultimately tiresome.
Sometimes after a long day I just want to turn on the TV and watch a football game without lessons in the wrongs of white privilege and systematic racism.
I’m a science fiction fan and enjoyed “Doctor Who.” The show has been around since the early 1960s. The main character is a time-traveling space explorer. Every few years they need to get a new actor, so they came up with a great plot mechanism.
The “Doctor” dies off every few seasons and “regenerates” into a different man (a different actor). Since 1963 and over 15 regenerations the doctor has always been a man, so how amazing it is that the last time he regenerated he came out as a woman. We get it. This beloved character of 58 years is now trans. Great.
By the way, the odds of flipping a coin and having it land heads 15 times in a row before it finally lands tails is one-in-65,536. Really, try it.
I enjoy the Marvel movies. Thor’s brother and antagonist, Loki, is a delightfully mischievous character throughout the films. Now Disney+ has gone to lengths to let us know he’s been bisexual all this time.
SpongeBob SquarePants is the Bugs Bunny to a younger generation. After the character’s creator died, Nickelodeon, which airs SpongeBob, declared that SpongeBob was, in fact, gay.
I have a son with Down syndrome, meaning I’ve been suffering through SpongeBob, and self-medicating with cheap scotch to bear it, for at least 15 years. There has never been any indication SpongeBob was interested in other male sponges.
On a recent flight, crammed between two men, obviously on their way to a “before” photo-shoot for Weight Watchers, we were forced to watch a video starring the self-righteous United Airlines CEO proclaiming how they’re committed to zero emissions by 2050.
Not certain how they’re going to get windmills on planes, but watching this smug drivel I had different questions. How will that give me even a millimeter more of legroom? How will it get my flights to leave on time? How will it save me money?
Then they played another video proclaiming their commitment to train women of color as pilots. Again, fine and dandy. So, tell us just how that means we will no longer be waiting for 20 minutes for the gate crew to finally get the jetway to the plane.
I have State Farm Insurance for most everything. When I saw an article saying they gave money to a kids’ trans indoctrination organization, GenderCool, I thought I’d check with my longtime State Farm agent. And yep, sure enough they did, along with many other companies, while jacking up my premiums.
Time to start shopping insurance, not because I don’t support trans kids, but because I want to buy insurance, not virtue signaling.
The nuanced point I’m trying to make is being exasperated at this strained and fake corporate wokeism doesn’t make one anti-gay, anti-trans or racist.
And those of us who are just plain tired of it are starting to come out of the closet and say so.
Our message to these companies — go woke, go broke.
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think in Denver.
