Beauty & The Beast: Too Gay?

The highly anticipated Beauty and the Beast live action film hit theaters March 13th. Where classic Disney fans are concerned, this is a long time coming and a new way to tell the story to the next generation. The director, Bill Condon, revealed that there was going to be a few tweaks to the original Disney classic. One of those tweaks being that the beloved character, LaFou played by Josh Gad, was revealed to be a gay man. This hit a nerve with various locations nationally and internationally. Numerous parents have decided that they don’t want to “subject” their kids to a movie that supports a gay character.

An Alabama movie theater decided to boycott the Disney movie with the gay scene. The Russian government and the Malaysian censorship board asked Disney to delete the gay scene, which Disney refused. The scene isn’t explicit, it isn’t two men kissing, they’re not in bed together, it’s nothing where your child would knowingly understand what was happening. The boycott of Beauty and the Beast is a part of the bigger picture of the treatment of the LGBT community in the United States. It showcases the outrage that the country has become so accustomed to and somehow has become a part of our culture.

SPOILER: The "gay moment" that everyone is referring to is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot in the film's final seconds. LeFou, the villain Gaston's (Luke Evans) side-kick, dances with a man in the final ball sequence just before the credits roll. There are also slight references to LeFou's sexuality over the course of the film. He is portrayed as having something of an unrequited crush on Gaston, having euphemistic conversations about their relationship and looking longingly at him during the song Gaston (much like in the cartoon version).