Disney's Four Keys have always been Safety, Courtesy, Show, and Efficiency.
Now they are adding a fifth key: Inclusion.
This is a fantastic thing, and makes me even prouder to be a former Disney cast member.
I was a cast member when they introduced benefits for same-sex partners. I was proud then, as they were one of the first U.S. companies to do so. Disney has always been inclusive (well, maybe not ALWAYS, but they were when I worked for them). And I'm happy to see that they are making it a part of training that inclusiveness is a cornerstone of working for them.
I'll be honest: I was homophobic when I hired in to Disneyland when I was 19. But, with Disneyland having such a diverse cast, I worked with people who proved me wrong. Over my years of working at Disneyland, I worked with many people from many different backgrounds and of many orientations. And it taught me acceptance. Because there were GOOD people. I platonically love the people I worked with. We worked together to make magic happen, and I am forever grateful for having worked with them. We had a FANTASTIC group of people, and they taught me a lot about guest service, and a lot about life. It didn't result in "hate the sin, not the sinner." It instead resulted in "it's not a sin to love who you love." My own orientation didn't change (I'm still just a boring cishet white male, because I was just born that way), but it taught me that people are just...people. And that people can be different from me and still be cool people. Let people be who they are. Let yourself ACCEPT people as they are. Discrimination is a bad thing. Inclusion is a good thing. And while my personal journey at Disneyland as a cast member was more focused on accepting LGBT+ people (I grew up near Los Angeles, so the race thing was never an issue for me as I grew up knowing that race didn't define a person, it was a growing experience for me. Life isn't some private club that excludes people for random reasons like sexual orientation, race, color, national origin, religion, or whatever other random reasons that people hate each other without even knowing them. We're all in this together. Or, at least, we SHOULD be.
