Christians in Show Business Unmoved by Disney Boycott

The Southern Baptist threat of a boycott against Walt Disney Co. businesses over gay-rights issues this week was not welcomed by conservative Christians in the San Fernando Valley who minister to people working at Burbank-based Disney and other entertainment companies.

“A lot of good people at Disney are going to be affected,” said actor Robert Hanley, who founded the Encino-based Entertainment Fellowship, which is expanding to six Catholic parishes.

“We have folks in our church who are part of the entertainment industry and we think they are a positive influence,” said the Rev. Charles Cutney, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of North Hollywood.

“I think a boycott is counterproductive.”

Southern Baptists--the nation’s largest Protestant denomination--voted at their annual meeting in New Orleans on Wednesday to declare a boycott against Disney if it does not change its policies. Critics protested the company’s granting health-insurance coverage to same-sex domestic partners of Disney employees and allowing gay and lesbian nights at its theme parks.

The Rev. Ray Grubb, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Sylmar, said that although the resolution was passed overwhelmingly by about 13,000 convention-goers, the typical Southern Baptist is an unpredictable, independent thinker who will make an individual decision.

Even an Orange County pastor who argued strongly for the resolution says he isn’t going to throw away his 1996 passes to Disneyland.

The Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, told reporters in New Orleans that he would stop buying Disney products but would still go to the attraction in nearby Anaheim.

“We have at least a dozen family passes to Disneyland and I’m not going to throw them away. They cost too much money,” Drake said. “But when I go, I’m not going to buy any food or products at the park.”

The Baptist meeting’s resolution criticized an “anti-Christian and anti-family trend” at Disney, saying the company has “given the appearance that the promotion of homosexuality is more important than its historic commitment to traditional family values.”

Immediately following the vote, Disney’s public relations office in Burbank issued a terse statement:

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“We find it curious that a group that claims to espouse family values would vote to boycott the world’s largest producer of wholesome family entertainment. We question any group that demands that we deprive people of health benefits and we know of no tourist destination in the world that denies admission to people as the Baptists are insisting we do.”

The Baptists also objected to other products issued through Disney subsidiaries, including “Priest,” a film distributed by Miramax that last year provoked strong reactions from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Such corporate decisions amounted to “a gratuitous insult to Christians,” the resolution said.

Pastor Drake, who also complained in New Orleans interviews that Disneyland is promoting a religion of Satanism with its “Fantasmic” show, directs the Southern California chapter of the American Family Assn.

That organization, led by the Rev. Donald Wildmon of Tupelo, Miss., is the best-known exponent of national boycotts against entertainment companies and TV advertisers. It draws sharp criticism from Hollywood leaders who accuse Wildmon of advocating censorship, even as they dismiss the association as having no significant influence.

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Some ministers and laymen who work with religious people in the entertainment field said they reject the call for a boycott--even if they sympathize with conservative Christian attacks on expanded gay and lesbian rights.

“God has a place for prophets,” said Pastor Cutney of North Hollywood. “Moral issues are very important, but Christ’s example, by my understanding, is to turn the other cheek and do what you can with your own love.”

People in the entertainment industry, among others, attend Sunday services at his church, Cutney said. “One reason they come to a church like ours is that we want to be salt and light in this industry,” he said--in other words, employing subtler persuasions to influence those who work in Hollywood.

The Southern Baptists’ statement “may be important, but they need to understand the impact,” said Phillip Myles, a member of Van Nuys’ Church on the Way and a board member of the Christian Entertainers Fellowship, a group made up largely of evangelical Protestants in show business.

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“We have believers who work at Disney and who are praying every day and doing their witness to co-workers.”

Hanley said his Entertainment Fellowship--a separate organization that holds monthly discussion groups focused on personal and career struggles--likewise has tried to encourage Catholics, Protestants and Jews working in Hollywood to maintain their moral integrity.

The fellowship, which recently doubled its mailing list to 1,200, “hopes to make a difference in the individual so that a person would stand up for his or her beliefs,” he said.

Instead of a general boycott, Hanley said, “any protest should be a knowledgeable, focused one against a particular film or should take the form of letters to producers of that film.” The Rev. Nancy Wilson of the gay-oriented International Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches said it was no surprise that the Southern Baptists “are not on the front lines of supporting civil rights or a more inclusive concept of family.”

Wilson, vice moderator of the Hollywood-based denomination and pastor of the founding Los Angeles congregation, added that the Disney Co. is no different from Sea World, Universal Studios and other theme parks that allow gay and lesbian organizations to reserve the parks for special nights.

“Disneyland has been doing it for 10 years at least,” Wilson said.

As for Southern Baptists nixing Disneyland, “I wonder what Southern Baptist children think about that,” she added.