Are you a Star Wars fan? I am. Well, I kind of am. I’m not so sure anymore. The films of the original trilogy will forever be favorites. But then again, I was there in the ’70s and ’80s when they were let loose on the world. The prequels, I can take or leave them. The sequels—puke. Although there was that one scene in Episode VII where the Millennium Falcon was reintroduced. I’ll admit to having enjoyed the chase. The endless spin-offs? Just stop already. By the way, have you seen the box office results for the new The Mandalorian and Grogu film? They’re not good.

But I didn’t come here this morning to talk about how Disney murdered Star Wars. At least, not directly. In truth, Star Wars comes to mind because I read something last Wednesday that reminded me of the crime scene. And the Thoma family talked about it during dinner that same night. After that discussion, I’ve convinced myself we may have a serial killer on our hands.

Gallup keeps track of lots of things. Its latest numbers concerning LGBTQ Inc.’s acceptance in America are telling. I’m not necessarily surprised. Although I’m willing to bet that the people who thought they could force consent through exhaustion are a little bit nervous. That’s because, after years of rainbow-branded everything, Americans appear to be pulling back. Even some major corporations are taking a stand. I read last week that a few NFL teams bowed out of Pride Month. Parades in different cities can’t get the funding they used to get. Some businesses are actually putting out statements saying they were sitting it out, too. Jennifer read to me Chick-fil-A’s public statement. Take a look. It’s good.

But again, Gallup’s numbers. The findings sure seem to suggest that the public is tired of being re-educated. Support for same-sex marriage has fallen from 71% to 65% since 2023. That’s a huge shift in a very short period of time. Moral acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships has dropped from 71% to 62%. The trajectory is the same relative to gender transitioning. Its favorability dropped from 46% to 38%.

The partisan split was somewhat interesting, too. For a time, LGBTQ Inc. seemed to be gaining traction in the Republican Party. But now it’s slipping. Republican support for same-sex marriage has fallen from 55% to 37%. It’s no surprise that the Democrat Party’s numbers didn’t move at all, remaining at 87%. On the moral acceptability of LGBTQ relationships, Republicans are at 35%. Democrats are at 81%. On changing one’s gender, only 5% of Republicans consider it morally acceptable. Democrats have far more weirdos. They’re at 60% in that category.

Regardless of anyone’s opinions, these show a vast distinction. If anything, I think these numbers show that the two main political parties in America are indeed living inside very different moral worlds. I’ll bet the LGBTQ Inc. element in both looks at these numbers and sees unfortunate regression. I look at them and see a nation rediscovering its gag reflex.

Again, as a Star Wars fan, this feels familiar. And I should probably add Marvel to the mix, too. Genuine fans who watched what happened to these two franchises will know what I mean.

At dinner on Wednesday, I made the point that both franchises were once strong because they respected the worlds they inherited. Born in the ’70s, Star Wars had myth, fathers and sons, sacrifice, redemption, darkness and light, and an almost religious awareness that power without virtue destroys the soul. Many of Marvel’s characters emerged in the ’60s. They swooped in with courage, friendship, and dutiful loyalty. Then the films began, and they held to the original concepts.

But then Disney bought Star Wars. Then Disney bought Marvel. Then came the ideological machinery designed to rework everything fans knew. But it wasn’t just slight creative enhancements. It was a complete reworking delivered in a tidal wash of political ideology. The whole thing was designed to smother all the original premises.

With that as the goal, film followed film. Spin-off followed spin-off. Streaming series followed streaming series. At dinner, I told the family that after Disney took charge, everything in the Star Wars world started to feel as if it had been processed through a lesson plan.

The box office has now supplied some interesting receipts. The Mandalorian and Grogu is a huge flop. Some estimates say it cost $500 million to make, which includes international marketing. It’s been out for a few weeks, and it’s only at $248 million in worldwide sales. It wasn’t that long ago that people were calling the new live-action Snow White film the worst flop in history. By comparison, it lost about $170 million.

Again, I told the family during dinner that Disney seems to be in the business of losing any and all money it made before it got into the business of re-education.

I think the Star Wars sequel trilogy made the forthcoming demise obvious. By the time episodes VII, VIII, and IX arrived, original fans like me (and I should include my sons, who were raised in the lore) noticed a managed demolition of our inheritance. Disney could have stewarded the franchise’s lore with humility. Instead, they treated the old world as needing renovation. All of it—the Force, the Jedi, the moral architecture that made the story resonate with billions of fans—directors and executives spoke as though the old ways needed to be challenged and remade. A line from Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi captured the new spirit. I haven’t forgotten it. He said, “Let the past die, and kill it if necessary.”

The thing is, the real caretakers of the Star Wars legacy and the source of its genuine success—billions of fans like me—we can endure a fresh story. We can endure new characters. We can even endure surprises. What we resist is contempt for received things. We resist the smugness that looks at inherited loves and assumes those loves are flawed and need to be demolished.

Disney followed the same path with Marvel. It received a massive story arc that rewarded patience and devotion. Then they began adding ideological obligation. Audiences began to drift. Why? Because the people who love the films weren’t interested in beloved things being rewritten to scold them.

I think that’s the real cultural context for Gallup’s numbers.

For a long time, Americans were told that every new moral demand represented compassion and inclusion and diversity and progress and whatever other syrupy word could be used to impose guilt. The first ask was tolerance. But very soon tolerance also meant affirmation. Affirmation demanded celebration. Now it has become compelled speech, pronoun rituals, men in women’s sports, parental rights being stripped away, and public shaming for anyone who disagrees.

I suppose this is also where tradition comes to mind. When I teach about tradition in my catechetical classes, I try to make the point that tradition is, in at least one sense, the accumulated wisdom of people who learned, sometimes painfully, that certain things are built into reality. God’s moral and natural law are exactly this. They are the deepest structure of creation. Male and female, marriage, fatherhood, motherhood, the human body, the boundaries of acceptable human desire—these are simply givens, and they are far more durable than anyone with other ideas might think.

Of course, these givens do not grant permission to be cruel to the confused. Christians owe every neighbor patience, and most importantly, kindness. But kindness doesn’t require us to pretend that Disney—or anyone else for that matter—has some sort of authority to overrule creation. Kindness doesn’t require us to surrender reality. People are actually being kind—even loving—when they hold the line on what is real and what isn’t.

In the end, I’d say the Gallup numbers suggest that many Americans have reached the same point audiences reached with Star Wars and Marvel. They’ve had enough. They’ve been lectured enough. They’ve watched enough traditions get mocked and replaced by people who seem far more eager to deconstruct what human history knows to be true.

And so, in the end, the lesson is relatively simple. You can push people for a while. You can shame them for a while. You can flood every institution with the same message for a while. You can even persuade many of them that resistance will be embarrassing and costly. Still, creation has a way of reasserting itself. Reality will always outlast propaganda. And because tradition is built from real things, it has a way of surviving the people who sneer at it.