Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

August 1997 – Described as nothing more than a “gnat on an elephant” by one former Disney executive, more than 12,000 delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) overwhelmingly approved the language of a resolution encouraging Southern Baptists to “refrain from patronizing The Disney Company and any of its related entities.” The reason? Disney has been “increasingly promoting immoral ideologies such as homosexuality, infidelity, and adultery….”

Last year’s SBC censured Disney, and gave the company a year to change its ways and return to a more family-friendly posture. Disney ignored them.

“I don’t think anyone would argue that Disney has made any measurable positive response. It’s almost an in-your-face kind of attitude,” said Richard Land, president of the SBC Christian Life Commission. Land was charged with the responsibility for monitoring Disney over the past year. He added, “On good days, the Disney corporation ignored us. On bad days, they contemptuously gave us the back of their hands.”

Several weeks after the SBC vote last year, Disney chairman Michael Eisner called the censure “foolish.”

Now, however, Disney seems to be treading more carefully. Following this year’s vote, the company issued a short, measured response: “We are proud of the Disney brand. It creates more family entertainment of every kind than anyone else in the world, and we plan, in fact, to increase that production.”

The statement made it clear that the company was trying to straddle the thin line between defending itself and trying hard not to appear too arrogant about the boycott’s chances of success. As one Disney executive told the Los Angeles Times, “You don’t want to wave a red cape at the bull.”

Although the resolution was not binding, the threat of a boycott from the SBC must cause at least a few sleepless nights at Disney headquarters. Southern Baptists make up the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, with 15.7 million members in 40,613 churches affiliated with the convention.

But Disney’s size is breathtaking: the company and its subsidiaries employ more than 90,000 people in 700 locations; in all of its divisions, Disney had revenues of $21 billion last year – and earned a hefty $1.2 billion profit in fiscal 1996; its theme parks in the U.S. welcomed at least 38 million visitors last year alone, and enjoyed an 8% or 9% increase in the last 12 months.

Dennis Garrett, marketing professor at Marquette University, said, “Disney is such a behemoth of a corporation, you’ll never bring it to its knees.”

There are signs, however, that a boycott might bring some financial pressure to bear on Disney. In the year since the SBC voted last summer, Land said, “[M]y mail and phone calls have been running 90-10 opposed to Disney.”

“We can live without Disney,” said lifelong Florida resident and delegate to the SBC, Glenda Entz.

And Southern Baptists might not be the only ones to boycott. According to an article by Gwen Daye Richardson in USA Today, Newsweek conducted a poll shortly after the SBC vote, which showed that about three in 10 Americans – about 50 million adults – said they would join the SBC in their boycott of Disney.

Most analysts think the real pressure on Disney won’t be on the financial side of the equation. Observers who study the effectiveness of boycotts say companies are often more concerned about damage to their image than about the amount of money they may lose.

“The concern is [a boycott] may eventually have an impact if there is some erosion on the image level,” said Monroe Friedman, a psychology professor at Eastern Michigan University.

Recent examples include a boycott of Texaco by black Americans upset with what they perceived to be that company’s discriminatory practices, and the decision by media giant Time Warner Inc. in 1995 to divest itself of Interscope Records, after public uproar over the record label’s gangsta rap.

But Land insisted that the results of the boycott – whether Disney ever changes its policies and practices – is not really the point for Southern Baptists. “God never commanded us to be successful,” he said. “He commanded us to be faithful.”