Disney’s Latest Family Value: Hate

If your son were a Buddhist and felt Buddhism had helped him, would you be happy for him or would you try to destroy his newfound faith? Would you belittle him and his beliefs, or would you try to support him?

If more of your family members became Buddhists and lived happier lives, would you go around and try to find the 10 ex-Buddhists who had a beef with that religion and promote them to try to prevent others from becoming Buddhists?

Disney Land
A statue of Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland.

If you were kicked out of a religion for immorality, would you make it your life’s work to ruin it?

If your answer to the first questions posed in this post is that you would be happy for your son, your family and the other 244 million people who feel Buddhism is something they want in their lives, you wouldn’t be Leah Remini. Although the religion she is attacking is Scientology, the scenario is the same.

How Disney feels comfortable coming down on that side of the fence is beyond me. Apparently, their real values are not family values.

Leah Remini is using the media to “take revenge” on those whose biggest crime was trying to help her lead a better life. One of the first lessons in Scientology is how to get along better with others (obviously that lesson didn’t stick with her). Only a truly vengeful person would go after her family’s religion when she couldn’t live up to its standards herself—standards like telling the truth, helping others, not tearing your friends down, etc.

That any media outlet would give her five minutes to carry out her personal vendetta, let alone hours of airtime, is disgusting. Attacking a religion out of your own prejudice is something the Nazi’s did. It is something leaders of the Inquisition did. It is something the IRA did. None of these groups’ members were good guys. How Disney feels comfortable coming down on that side of the fence is beyond me. Apparently, their real values are not family values.

Attacking someone’s religion is not something Disney should be promoting. What next, a nice Disney movie about the fun to be had in discriminating? Maybe the theme song could be titled: “I Love to Hate” or “These People Don’t Deserve to Live.” It could have nice animation, showing cartoon people bashing others over the head in a colorful dance sequence.

Come on Disney, get it together. Stop the hate. Stop promoting religious bigotry.

It has no place in your brand—or the 21st century.

AUTHOR
Deanne Macdonald
Business consultant and student of life.