I actually thought this movie was much more overtly supportive of Christian values than it was overtly supportive of homosexuality. (It seems to have sort of a tortured relationship to homosexuality, at least if the choices of which characters are gay say anything, which I personally think is sort of sad for the director, but which might make all the outraged paragons of virtue in this comment section feel a little better.) The only decent person in the village is the village priest (who is also the person who lends Belle her books), there are whole songs about maintaining faith, hope, and love in the face of darkness, the sorceress and her rose seem almost Virgin Mary esque to me, and it is an understatement to say that the last scene is resurrection-y. We watch all the faithful castle people die one by one and then watch as they are resurrected and joyfully reunited with their loved ones as the sun rises over the world, all the snow melts, and that statue turns into either St. George or (even better) the Archangel Michael and the devil.

Anyway, having never encountered this director before, the first thing I thought after watching the film was that he must be Catholic (and indeed he was raised in an Irish Catholic family/neighborhood in Queens; I couldn't figure out what his relationship to the church is now). I came across this page because I've been looking around to see if anyone else noticed this stuff, but most people who are inclined to see a Christian message in the movie waste their time inventing silly Christian messages like "the prince was turned into a beast because he sinned against his sex by wearing makeup" (no matter that this was a perfectly masculine thing to do in the 18th century). Personally, I think the real issue with the movie is that, like the first version, it encourages young girls to think they can change abusive partners if they love them enough, but I'm not sure that's really so at odds with a lot of Christian teachings on the subject.