March 17, 2017 03:45 PM UTC

Oh, The Inanity!

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• by: Colorado Pols

There are a lot of big issues in the news this week. This is not one of them.

Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute for Manufactured Angst is hopping mad about a new movie in theaters this weekend. According to the Director of the Centennial Institute, Jeff Hunt, the timeless story of a woman falling in love with a water buffalo is being ruined — RUINED! — because one of the minor characters might be a homosexual.

Ernest Luning has the story for the Colorado Statesman:

Colorado’s Centennial Institute is spearheading a campaign urging Christians to boycott Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” because the film purportedly includes an onscreen “exclusively gay moment” and its openly gay director has demonstrated a “hostile approach to the Bible.”

“What was frustrating about this film was we clearly saw there was an attempt to drive an agenda, and an agenda that was offensive to people who embrace and support traditional family values,” Jeff Hunt, director of the Lakewood-based Centennial Institute, Colorado Christian University’s think tank, told The Colorado Statesman…

…The movie — a faithful live-action remake of the animated 1991 Disney classic — has set tongues wagging at reports the character LeFou, the main villain’s sidekick, portrayed by actor Josh Gad, is gay and has a “gay moment” on screen.

According to the online culture magazine Vulture, the “gay moment” occurs when LeFou dances for “two seconds at the most” with a villainous henchman amid a flurry of celebration at the end of the movie. Other reviewers say there might be a few winks and sidelong glances, but some also insist that reports the movie features Disney’s first openly gay character are a stretch at best.

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”33%”]”If this was a film about a woman falling in love with an animal, I’m sure we would have something to say about that.”[/mantra-pullquote]

You might be more familiar with the Centennial Institute at CCU because of the annual gathering it hosts in Denver each summer called the Western Conservative Summit (WCS). Last July, Donald Trump’s speech at the WCS marked his first visit to Colorado as the likely Republican nominee for President.

The Centennial Institute was founded in 2009 and run by former State Senator John Andrews until he retired last year. Over the years the Institute has grown increasingly militant in its public statements and fundraising pitches, employing fantastical phrases like “the secularist Left” and railing against “radical, anti-God liberals” of the world. We briefly considered ignoring this story altogether, rather than giving them any more publicity, but this protest is so ridiculous that it deserves all of the sunlight and associated mockery that comes with it. Plus, Luning’s story contains perhaps the best quote we’ve read this year:

[Hunt] also brushed aside a joke that’s been making the rounds — what’s the big deal about a gay character when the heroine is falling in love with a water buffalo?  — since the controversy over the movie’s “gay moment” emerged.

“He’s a man first,” Hunt said with a chuckle, pointing out that a spell has turned a prince into the Beast and that Beauty’s love turns him back into a man.

“If this was a film about a woman falling in love with an animal, I’m sure we would have something to say about that,” he added.

Beauty and the Beast is in theaters everywhere this weekend. Go see it twice.