The Walt Disney Company has indefinitely pulled Beauty and the Beast from theaters in Malaysia rather than remove scenes involving a gay character to placate local authorities and religious leaders.

Disney said in an emailed statement:

The film has not been and will not be cut for Malaysia.

Golden Screen Cinemas, Malaysia’s largest theater chain, said on Monday that it postponed showings of Beauty and the Beast at the studio’s request. Golden Screen will offer refunds to patrons who purchased advance tickets to screenings and a related event, the company said on its website.

Abdul Halim Abdul Hamid, the Film board chairman said that Malaysia’s Film Censorship Board had approved Beauty and the Beast for a P13 rating after requesting cuts of about 4 1/2 minutes from a subplot with a “gay moment”. Theaters would be allowed to screen the film at any time after it had been censored. A P13 rating requires those below 13 years of age to be accompanied by a guardian.

According to this report, Harussani Zakaria, above, the senior mufti for Malaysia’s northern Perak state, said the film would:

Sow the seeds of destruction and negative behaviour in our society. We must guard ourselves from Western behaviour, which has gone astray. This movie must be banned.

The Malaysian Muslim People Coalition also called for a ban, with its president Amsah Hamzah saying the film would:

Promote negative values.

The film has also come under fire from religious figures in neighbouring Singapore, with Christian clergy attacking Disney for deviating from:

Wholesome, mainstream values.

Said Bishop Rennis Ponniah, President of the National Council of Churches of Singapore:

Parents are therefore strongly advised to provide guidance to their children about this re-make of Beauty and the Beast.

Meanwhile, in the the US, where the film is set to take in as much as $120 million its first weekend, the totally deranged religious right activist and former Republican State Representative for Colorado, Gordon Klingenschmitt, above, has called on Christians to boycott the the movie so as to prevent demonic spirits from using it:

To recruit children into sin.

Reacting to reports that there is a “gay moment” in the film, Klingenschmitt said he “[doesn’t] want to know about it” and recommended that Christian parents boycott this “homosexual children’s movie” in order to:

Avoid having their children recruited into the homosexual agenda.

Disney and those involved in the production of this movie are being driven by demonic spirits to “intentionally [promote] sin to children”, he warned.

There is destruction in the future of these people who cooperate with that evil.

Klingenschmitt prayed that God will “stop the recruiting of our children into the sinful lifestyle of homosexuality” and that Americans will finally “wake up and boycott the Disney corporation,” which he claimed has:

Been using money to fund the gay agenda for decades.