FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, March 8, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – More than 114,000 people have pledged to boycott Disney over its promotion of the LGBT agenda in its Beauty and the Beast remake. And the number continues to rise.
LifeSiteNews' petition, launched March 2, tells Disney that harmful sexual political agendas have no place in children's movies. It promptly exceeded its initial goal of 50,000 signatures on the first day.
After getting picked up by other media outlets, it quickly passed a subsequent goal of 100,000. Now the initiative is aiming for a quarter-million people.
The film's so-called “explicitly gay moment” flies in the face of the company’s history as a source of wholesome family entertainment, betraying a corporation having caved to a morally flawed agenda of the culture.
The pushback in Disney’s direction indicates that many people have had enough.
LifeSiteNews’ petition is among concerted efforts to tell Disney that weaving homosexual indoctrination into its programming is not acceptable.
Tell Disney 'NO' to the LGBT agenda in Beauty and the Beast. Sign the boycott pledge here.
Christian evangelist Franklin Graham’s call last week for people to say “no” and tell Disney their thoughts garnered Facebook responses into six digits.
Both Graham’s Facebook post and a petition from One Million Moms criticized Disney’s “first exclusively gay moment” on film, along with Disney having introduced same-sex kissing on screen for the first time in one of its animated children’s television programs.
The One Million Moms petition says Disney is “pushing [the LGBT agenda] on families and children.” It has yielded over 47,000 signatures and continues to grow.
In addition, an Alabama drive-in theater is refusing to show the Beauty and the Beast remake. The owners cited their Christian principles and have persisted in the face of negative response.
While Beauty and the Beast is slated to open in Russia on March 16, one day before its U.S. release, the Russian government will ban the film for viewers under age 16. Officials determined that there is evidence of violation of Russia’s law banning homosexual propaganda for young people.
Russian MP Vitaly Milonov, a member of the country’s ruling party, had advised Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky last week to ban the movie. Milonov described it as “a blatant, shameless propaganda of sin and perverted sexual relationships.”
A 2013 Russian law prohibits promotion of homosexuality among minors and defines homosexuality as “non-traditional sexual relations.”
The director of Beauty and the Beast kindled the controversy last week when telling a homosexual lifestyle magazine that the Le Fou character would exhibit same-sex attraction in what he termed “a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.”
Bill Condon had also said actor Josh Gad “makes something really subtle and delicious out of it.”
Condon and Gad have since played down their initial positive comments about the re-characterization of Le Fou to be gay.
A trailer released for the film shows an obviously flamboyant LeFou dancing and singing the film’s “Gaston” song to the Gaston character as he praises and fawns over him.
But the actual moment causing the controversy has since been leaked in the press. It features Le Fou happily dancing off with another male character after they inadvertently end up in each other’s arms during a ballroom dance scene.
It’s far from the first instance of Disney flouting homosexuality on screen, as homosexual characterization has surfaced several times in TV programming and been rumored regarding varying movie characters for years.
But it is the first time a representative of the company has conceded an exclusively gay character in a Disney film, and it is the company’s apparent response to LGBT pressure through the years to include more homosexuality on screen in its programming.
After signing LifeSiteNews’ petition to Disney, signatories are offered the option to mail an actual physical postcard to the Disney Company at Disney headquarters for an additionally concrete expression of concern.