Governor wants ‘Mountain Disneyland,’ claims state doesn’t ‘meddle’ in companies’ affairs

By Bob Unruh

(Photo by Stone Hood on Unsplash)
(Photo by Stone Hood on Unsplash)

Colorado’s homosexual governor, inserting himself into the fight over morality that has driven a wedge between Florida and managers at its Disney properties, says he would like to see a “Mountain Disneyland” and has claimed on social media that “In CO, we don’t meddle in affairs of companies like @Disney or @Twitter.”

The fight erupted because of Florida’s adoption of a law that protects the rights of parents of children in schools there, and prevents those schools from feeding those children in kindergarten through grade 3 an indoctrination of LGBT ideology.

Disney officials have complained about the law, to the point they’ve said their goal is to overturn it.

In response, Gov. Ron DeSantis has proposed the state legislature take away Disney’s special privileges regarding its property for its parks, suggesting that they should now come under the oversight over a multitude of county departments and regulations.

Which all resulted in the claims from Colorado’s Jared Polis, the first homosexual governor to hold that office in the country.

He said, on social media, “Florida’s authoritarian social attacks on the private sector are driving businesses away. In CO, we don’t meddle in affairs of companies like @Disney or @Twitter. Hey @Disney we’re ready for Mountain Disneyland and @twitter we’re ready for Twitter HQ2, whoever your owners are.”

A local broadcaster suggested, “Perhaps Mickey Mouse might have to get used to living at altitude.”

The report also noted DeSantis’ dissatisfaction with Twitter’s move to fight a possible takeover by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, with the statement, “We’re going to be looking at ways the state of Florida potentially can be holding these Twitter board of directors accountable for breaching their fiduciary duty.”

Disney has no significant presence in Colorado, and there is a Twitter office, one of dozens the company has established around the globe.

And while Polis’ claim, “In CO, we don’t meddle in affairs of companies like @Disney or @Twitter” may technically be accurate given the state’s minimal influence on those specific companies, it has established a rock-solid reputation for interfering with and mandating morality for private companies, and even earned a rare public rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court for its agenda.

Jared Polis (Official portrait)

And its demands of those companies focus on the same issues that have caused the Disney situation to erupt: the conflict between traditional biblical beliefs and values and the corporate and government promotions of the LGBT ideology.

The only difference, it appears, is that Polis is on the side of Disney’s agenda, as his state has exhibited in multiple court cases, including one involving the 303 Creative company in Denver, which is being punished by the state because the owner, a Christian, declines to promote same-sex marriages, as well as the state’s years-long war against Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who was ordered into a reindoctrination program by the state for declining to promote homosexuality with his baking artistry.

It was constitutional expert Jonathan Turley who said the 3030 Creative ruling, coming soon from the Supreme Court, will provide the definitive ruling on whether cities and states can violate the Constitution, and order individuals to violate their own constitutionally protected religious beliefs, with “non-discrimination laws.”

The question before the high court is regarding Colorado’s interference in the operations of 303 Creative, specifically, “Whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”

The case involves Lorie Smith and her 303 Creative company to design websites for weddings. She cannot, because of her Christian faith, promote same-sex duos, and so has become a target for the leftists in Colorado, which is run by Polis and a Democrat-controlled legislature.

The state earlier earned a stunning rebuke from the Supreme Court on the same law, but that decision involving Jack Phillips and his Masterpiece Cakeshop was decided based on the state’s “hostility” to Christianity, not the law itself.

Now comes Smith, with the state’s attack on her faith, and Turley points out that while he, himself, supports same-sex marriages, he doubts the legality of the state’s “Anti-Discrimination Act” that has as its very purpose to be “eliminating … ideas.”

Those words come from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that went against Smith, and Turley said they “may be some of the most honest but chilling words ever uttered in a federal court opinion.”

He said, “Many years ago, I wrote an academic piece on how anti-discrimination laws would inevitably collide with free-speech and free-exercise rights. Those conflicts continued to mount across the country. In 2018, the court was thought to be ready to clarify the applicable standards in the case of a religious cake shop owner who refused to make cakes for same-sex couples. The court ultimately punted in that case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, ruling for the owner yet leaving uncertainty over the constitutional limitations on cities and states under anti-discrimination law.

“Smith’s case has long been a focus for some of us. I have written in favor of taking a free-speech approach to these cases rather than treating them as conflicts under the Constitution’s religion clauses.”

He said the coming decision, then, “could signal that a new, bright line will be drawn in this case.”

He said, “One’s personal views or values should not matter in determining whether Smith has a right to the expression of her own views as an artist,” and that “brings us to the most striking aspect of the 10th Circuit opinion.”

Turley said past court decisions have minimized the actual impact on speech rights on those “nondiscrimination” laws, which actually institutionalize discrimination against those with opinions not favored by the state.

The 10th Circuit Court, embedded as it is within a leftist state, already has produced some leftist decisions, and in this case it was “neither evasive nor ambiguous.”

“It agreed that this case involved ‘pure speech’ and that the state was forcing her both to say things she opposed and to not say things she supported. It further agreed that this denial required the satisfaction of the most stringent constitutional standard: the strict scrutiny test. It then said all of that was perfectly constitutional. The court ruled that the state could create a type of ‘pro-LGBT gerrymander’ forcing religious artists to celebrate same-sex marriage while protecting the speech rights of secular artists,” he explained.

In fact, when the Phillips case was before the Supreme Court, the evidence showed Colorado allowed pro-LGBT bakers to refuse requests to create a cake with the Old Testament condemnation of homosexuality as a theme because of their “beliefs.” The state, however, denied Phillips exactly the same protections.

Turley said, “After years of obfuscation and avoidance, the court finally has a free speech case without exit ramps or extraneous issues. Free speech offers a clear path and precedent for addressing these conflicts. For example, a Jewish baker asked to make a ‘Mein Kampf’ cake, or a black baker asked to make a KKK cake, should be able to refuse those jobs as offensive to them.”

“‘Public accommodation’ should not mean ‘compelled public speech.’ Likewise, it should not allow the government to ban an artist from expressing her views on the sanctity of marriages, even if many of us reject her views,” he explained.

He suggested the appeals court ruling is rank with prejudice, explaining its opinion was that “Some views are simply intolerable. According to the court, an artist espousing faith-based objections to same-sex marriage is simply one of those views that must be excised ‘from the public dialogue’ and ‘eliminating such ideas is CADA’s very purpose.'”

The Denver Post previously has outlined how Polis got rich – taking the images and poetry his parents created for their Blue Mountain Arts greeting card company and putting them online, then selling that for some $800 million.

He has used the massive profits he made to fund his own political campaigns, first for state Board of Education, then Congress, and most recently the governor’s office.

The report pointed out Polis gave his governor’s campaign $11.2 million, “a sum that dwarfs the budgets of his rivals, and one that’s already more than the combined spending of every candidate to ran for governor in 2014.”

His critics said he simply buys the races.

At one point early in his career, Polis had Russian connections, working there for several months, making money off of floor-trading in the newly developing stock market, the report noted.

More of his income came from buying material from the government and reselling it.

The Post confirmed Polis sold the online images and poetry to Excite@Home for $780 million.

“The timing couldn’t have been better for them — or worse for Excite@Home, the aspiring internet empire that bought them,” the report said. “The dot-com bubble popped a few months later, and Excite@Home would go on to declare bankruptcy in 2001; it later sold the e-card piece for a fraction of the price it paid.”

“We thought the property was massively interesting from a traffic perspective but also massively undermonetized,” said George Bell, then the CEO of Excite@Home. He said the company wanted to sell ads on the site, but its revenue projections failed to materialize.

He said it was the “wrong decision” to make the purchase from which Polis gained his wealth.

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Bob Unruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh's articles here.


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