Disney Censors God

Did Disney Censor God?

Disney Censors God

Why would Disney censor a child trying to thank God on their website? One family found out.

Since the release of the hit “Frozen,” there have been discussions about the possibility that Disney is censoring God in their works. This came after song lyrics were changed so that they referenced a generic heaven as opposed to the deity. However, another recent story has prompted a revisit to this situation, where a ten-year-old girl had a response censored on the Disney website for using the word “God.” Now Lilly Anderson and her parents are asking the multi-media business why the site filtered out this particular word.

The Incident In Question

On Lilly’s tenth birthday, she went onto The Disney Channel website and was prompted with a question that asked her to share what she was most thankful for. Her response was originally “God, my family, my church and my friends.”  To the horror of the young girl, the site came back with an automated response that asked her to “Please be nice.” She reached out to her mother in an attempt to figure out if she was simply doing something wrong with the submitting process.

After several attempts, the two came to the conclusion that the word that was being screened was, in fact, “God.” The message was allowed through after the exclusion of the word, and now both mother and daughter want answers for the perceived discrimination against them and their faith.

Disney’s Initial Explanation

Disney’s initial reaction to the exclusion of the word “God” from their site was met with confusion. The representative could not see that there was any particular reason for the word to be excluded from their Disney Channel site, and it required further action. Upon reviewing the information that was given to them, Disney released a statement saying that the word God is censored from their site, but it has nothing to do with religious discrimination.

It turns out, they have limited the use of the term simply because it is often used in conjunction with expletives that are not necessarily religious in meaning, but could offend the children who frequent the site most. While this is a rather innocuous and understandable reaction, some people are not so sure.

Why The Surprising Message?

Even if the word God must be filtered out, the fact that it elicits a blaring, red message has many people crying foul, including Lilly Anderson’s mother. She, and many others, believes that the association of the word God with a warning sign on a computer screen will cause a negative feeling within young, impressionable children. Moreover, people have asked why other stem words for curses such as son or mother have not been censored, but have been met with no official response.

Still, others argue that the best solution is smarter filtering software for Disney that can get around negative attributions of the word “God” while still catching the expletives.

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