Disney is sexualizing kids and pushing LGBT identification even in a TV-PG family movie about Christmas.
At the 11:55 minute mark of “The Naughty Nine,” released on Nov. 22, Disney portrays the lead female character’s home: Her four siblings are opening gifts around a Christmas tree and one child tells another to go to “Dad.” Dad is shown standing alongside a much taller man, who has his arm around Dad’s shoulder, which he then lingeringly drapes along Dad’s back as they walk off. There’s no mom around. Just in case it’s not clear to the audience, later on they are referred to as “Dads.”
Portraying “two dads” as normal is one thing, but in another scene (at the 19:05 mark), Jon Anthony, a boy with gay mannerisms played by Deric McCabe, is selling clothing under his own designer label. To a potential buyer asking about an item, he gestures at another taller male and says, “I told that hottie over there I’d sell it to him for $200.”
Hollywood’s Christmas movies rarely include the “Christ” in “Christmas” anymore (please nudge my memory on when they last did), but to me this is a new low.
With this scene, Disney is sexualizing children and blurring the lines of what’s acceptable behavior. Later on, Jon also calls the male lead character Andy (played by Winslow Fegley) “cute,” which isn’t quite as sexual as “hottie,” but adds that element.
It’s not clear how old Jon’s character is supposed to be, but Andy is a fifth-grader and a couple of the “Naughty Nine” kids in the movie appear much younger than him. Fifth-graders are usually around 10 or 11. Maybe Jon’s a fifth-grader too, since he’s following a fifth-grader on a mission to see Santa, and kids don’t tend to take orders from younger kids. Either way, Jon is using sexually charged language with a fifth-grader and with little kids watching the movie. I know real fifth-graders who still believe in Santa and I cherish their innocence — and resent movie-makers who want to take it and sexualize them.
Did That Kid Just Hit On an Older Guy?
There’s also the disturbing aspect that Jon’s character may have just hit on an older male when he called him “hottie.” Sure, maybe “Cute Teen Boy Pop-Up” (Aidan Miller), as the credits call him, is actually the same age (in which case Jon is a teen and he called a fifth-grader “cute” in a questionable way). But children viewing the movie would see that the “cute teen” is taller and more masculine, which could easily give them the impression that he is older. An adult wouldn’t assume the two are different in age just because of height and masculinity, but many kids would. So an impressionable young viewer might see a child using suggestive language with a more mature male, and could be encouraged to do the same. (Of course, with kids, just a year or two is significant in maturation.)
The actors’ actual ages don’t matter, it’s how children perceive them. McCabe appears to have recently turned 15 and Fegley is 14, but, again, playing a 10- or 11-year-old. Child actors often play a different age than their own.
Regardless of these details, this is a Christmas movie for kids and the sexual references are so unnecessary.
Christians Aren’t Hateful, They Just Don’t Want Sex Pushed on Kids
I’m not sure how typical this is of Disney programming, because, like other Christians, I’ve tried to avoid many of Disney’s movies after they started to introduce more adult themes to kids.
Christians’ beliefs are based on the Bible and they don’t want movies pushing ideas they believe are wrong — especially on children. Anyone calling that hateful is being intolerant of Christians’ religious beliefs and arguably hateful themselves.
Jesus specifically talks about how wrong it is to lead children astray, and uses strong language to make his point:
If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. — Matthew 18:6
Disney Employees Say They Push ‘Gay Agenda’
We learned more about what’s really going on behind the scenes at Disney last year, when leaked audio showed a Disney producer boast about her efforts at “adding queerness to” children’s programming. “Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my, like, not-at-all-secret gay agenda,” said Latoya Raveneau, an executive producer for Disney Television Animation. “I was just, wherever I could, just basically adding queerness. … No one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.”
Another Disney employee, production coordinator Allen March, said in a video call that he had created “a tracker of our background characters to make sure that we have the full breadth of expression [with] all of our gender non-conforming characters.”
Disney also vowed to fight Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, passed in 2022, which bars educators from instructing kindergarten through third-grade students about sexual ideology.
Conservative families looking for alternatives to Disney and the like should check out the new Bentkey and other companies.
As for the “Naughty Nine,” its trailer makes the movie look like it’ll be a fun adventure about nine kids storming the North Pole. Disney describes the film:
Mischievous fifth grader Andy finds himself without a visit or presents from Santa on Christmas morning. Realizing he must have landed on the “naughty list” and feeling unfairly maligned, Andy pulls together a team of eight other “naughty listers” to help him execute an elaborate heist at the North Pole to get the presents they feel they deserve. Along the way, the group comes to realize that the very best way off the naughty list is to redirect their unique talents for good — instead of mischief.
If only Disney would use its power for good.
