Walt Disney World to host LGBT conference in September

The Walt Disney World Resort is set to host the Out & Equal Workplace Summit, a major LGBT conference, in September. This comes over a year after Disney had spoken out against Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law.

The Tampa Bay Times reports that the summit is touted to be the “largest LGBTQ+ conference in the world,” with over 5,000 attendees expected, including “ERG leaders and members, and HR and DEI professionals and experts – all working for LGBTQ+ equality.”

The Walt Disney Company is one of the partner organizations for the conference, along with Apple, Bank of America, Pfizer, Visa, the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others.

The Walt Disney World Resort hosts various conferences on different topics throughout the year. The last time it hosted the workplace summit was in 2016, held at the Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resort.

The 2016 conference was hosted months after the Pulse shooting in Orlando, where a gunman killed 49 people at the gay nightclub. The upcoming conference comes more than a year after Disney initially stayed quiet on Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law before coming out in opposition to it when it was signed into law.

Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law prohibited classrooms from kindergarten through third grade from teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity while disallowing schools from withholding information from parents about students’ health and well-being. The bill was called the “Don’t Say Gay” law by opponents who falsely claimed it banned the word “gay”.

After Disney publicly opposed the legislation, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis voiced his disagreement, accusing the company of spreading “fundamentally dishonest” claims about the bill. As a consequence of Disney’s statements, the state legislature and DeSantis moved to strip the company of its self-governing status for its Central Florida resort. However, the district has been restructured and given further state oversight under a new law passed this year.

Despite the backlash, Walt Disney World Resort is still open to hosting the Out & Equal Workplace Summit, which will see participants working towards LGBTQ+ equality in the workplace.

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