During the summer of 2008, my daughter Maria played the part of Belle in the Corn Stock Theater Production of Beauty and the Beast. At that time, she was 24 years old.

Beauty and the Beast was originally released in 1991 by Walt Disney Pictures as an animated musical and romantic fantasy. The movie was a box-office success and produced gross worldwide revenue of $425 million.

In 1994, Disney successfully launched Beauty and the Beast as a Broadway musical. After several years on Broadway, community theaters were given permission to rent the script for local productions.

The Corn Stock Production that Maria was involved in featured eight performances over a period of two weeks. I attended three of those performances. At each of the performances that I attended, there were young girls ranging in ages 4 to 10 years old who were dressed up like Belle. After each of the shows, the girls lined up with their mothers to meet Maria and to get a picture with her. It was fun watching the way the young girls behaved around Maria. They treated her as though she was a real-life princess.

The show represented the best of what Disney has always been known for: good, wholesome, family entertainment. Disney did a masterful job of combining music, dancing, romance, and conflict. As usual, in the end, good conquered evil and the prince and princess lived happily ever after.

In 2014, Disney announced that it was working on a live-action film adaption of the original 1991 animated film. After more than two years of work on the film, Disney released its first trailer in November 2016. The trailer accumulated more than 127 million views in the first 24 hours after its release, breaking all previous records for trailers. Since the release of the first trailer, Disney has done a first-rate job of promoting the film.

The movie is scheduled to open in theaters on March 17. I was looking forward to seeing it until last week when I read about an interview that the film’s director, Bill Condon, did with Attitude magazine, which is a British gay lifestyle magazine. In the interview, Condon described the new movie as a “treasure trove of gay secrets.”

Condon said that the person who plays the sidekick to the good-looking, masculine, muscular, conceited Gaston, is gay. That person’s name is LeFou. Here’s how Condon described LeFou:

LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston. He’s confused about what he wants. It’s somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. He makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. That’s what has its payoff at the end, which I don’t want to give away, but it is a nice, exclusively gay moment in a Disney movie.

Condon is a lapsed Catholic who leads an openly gay lifestyle. What he did in the interview was very clever. He revealed something about the movie that no one knew about, then stopped and said that he didn’t want to “give away” the “nice, exclusively gay moment in the Disney movie.”

Everyone who heard or read what Condon said will now be watching the movie, waiting for the “exclusively gay moment” to arrive. Instead of enjoying the unfolding story and romance between Belle and the beast, the people who go to see the movie will be thinking and wondering about what is going to be revealed about LeFou, and when it is going to be revealed.

Can you imagine anything like this ever happening in any of the other great Disney movies, such as Aladin, The Lion King, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Frozen, The Little Mermaid, Tangled, Cinderella, Bambi, Pinocchio, The Jungle Book, Swiss Family Robinson, Mary Pippins, Tarzan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, or 101 Dalmatians?

For the past 40 years, there has been an ongoing effort by Hollywood and the media to “normalize” the gay lifestyle. This effort began with subtle positive references to that lifestyle, but in recent years, the positive references have become much more blatant. Hollywood and the media have now adopted an in-your-face approach to promoting the gay lifestyle on TV and in the movies.

In 2015, the Gallop organization released a survey that showed that Americans believe that 23 percent of the people in the U.S. are gay or lesbian. Another Gallop survey showed that the actual number of people in the U.S. who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, is less than 4 percent.

Why would Americans think that there are six times more lesbians and gays in our country than there actually are? The primary reason is because gay and lesbian characters have become commonplace on TV and in the movies, and in most situations, those characters are portrayed as happy, satisfied, playful, fulfilled, fun-loving, and well-rounded individuals.

Homosexuality always has been and always will be contrary to the laws of nature and a sin against God. Those of us who still believe this are constantly ridiculed and belittled by the media and the gay community as being intolerant and hateful.

Since the beginning of time, Satan has been able to come up with deceptively creative ways to convince individuals that certain sins are not only good, but are also virtuous. That’s what has been happening with this particular sin for the past 40 years.

So what’s going to happen to all those young girls who go to the movie to see Belle become a princess, and the boys who go to the movie to see the battle between Beast and Gaston? As intended by the director of the movie, they will be subtly influenced to accept the sin of homosexuality as being “normal.” They will be led to believe that those who choose the gay lifestyle end up being happy, satisfied, playful, fulfilled, fun-loving, and well-rounded individuals.

God have mercy on us.

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