#god speaking to me in the queerest way possible: | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nerdygaymormon · 1 year

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Hi!

I'm a closeted heterosexual uranic demisexual she/they demigirlflux (a lot of labels, sorry) who is an active member of the church, and I just wanted to say that I appreciate you existing as a middle ground between queer people and mormons!

My parents are highly anti-LBGTQ+, which is why I'm still closeted, however I have been more open online bc I feel it's easier to be understood, but unfortunately I could almost never find any Christians of any kind who were queer, which meant I felt a bit torn about whether or not I was right to be queer.

I have never been able to find stuff about being anything but transgender in the Gospel Library and places like that, so I'm just rolling with it and hoping that I'm not making a huge mistake.

I have also had a lot of internalised queerphobia because of my parents and their active stance of 'all gays should burn and the other transsexuals should too', especially since they have threatened to kick me out and disown me should they find i'm anything but cishet.

Basically, I'm just happy to find someone who I hope I could talk to since we're both mormon and queer in some way shape or form.

Feel free to talk to me if you want!

~ Katsura

I'm sorry that your parents have such strong anti-LGBTQ+ views, I know that makes things stressful for you.

As far as finding things in the Gospel Library on queer topics, you'll find same-sex attraction (lesbian, gay & bi) and transgender. The church doesn't seem to be aware that there's any other identities out there.

For learning about queer topics, Tumblr is a good place to land, it's the queerest place on the internet with 25% of users identifying as LGBTQ. It's been the place where a some of queer identities were labeled and defined, and where several Pride flags were created.

Internalized queerphobia is rough. We heard all those rejecting messages and internalized them, and now that we understand ourselves to be queer those messages in our head are rejecting us. While you're in the closet, the advice I have is to find other queer people to hang around, even if it's online. Queer members especially will get you in a way others don't. If you aren't on the Queerstake Discord, message me and I'll get you an invite

And when you hear a rejecting message, push back against it. You may not be able to speak up against the messages, but at least in your head say something positive.

Another way you can affirm yourself is get a few things in Pride flags. The Uranic, Demisexual, and the Demigirlflux Pride flags are beautiful and most people will not recognize what they are. You could get 3 bracelets, one for each with those colors, or little pins of those flags to have mixed in with other pins on your backpack.

One thing we learn at church is to "liken the scriptures unto ourselves." I try to look at the scriptures with my queer eyes and it makes a difference, I can find principles and lessons for me, basically queerifying the scriptures. I sometimes make posts about them. Here's a link to several and you can choose to read them if you want:

Genesis 16 - Hagar : We may still be required to deal with difficult situations, but we have a God who hears us, a God who knows us

1 Samuel 16:7 - The Lord Looketh on the Heart : Gender & orientation are matters of the heart and God knows us for who we are

Galatians 3:28 - Ye Are All One in Christ Jesus : The scriptures say that all our diversity is welcome by Christ

2 Nephi 26:33 - All are Alike Unto God : When will the Church embrace all people?

Moses 6:31 - Enoch doesn’t See Himself as God Does : When queer people accept ourselves it opens 1000 doors of possibility

Katsura, feel free to DM me whenever you want

-David

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dumbledearme · 6 years

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chapter four

~~ read The Second Soul here ~~

Ten minutes later Martin and Johanna were wedged deep in an overstuffed sofa in Oggie’s living room. Oggie sat facing them in a threadbare blazer and pajama bottoms, and rocked endlessly in a plastic-covered easy chair as he talked. He seemed happy just to have an audience.

“Sure, I remember them,” he said. “Odd collection of people. We’d see them in town now and again, the children, sometimes their minder-woman, too, buying milk and medicine and what-have-you. You’d say ‘good morning’ and they’d look the other way. Kept to themselves, they did, off in that big house. Lot of talk about what might’ve been going on over there, though no one knew for sure.”

“What kind of talk?”

“Lot of rot. Like I said, no one knew. All I can say is they weren’t your regular sort of orphan children, who you’ll see come into town for parades and things and always have time for a chat. This lot was different. Some of ’em couldn’t even speak English.”

“Because they weren’t really orphans,” Johanna said. “They were refugees from other countries. Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia…”

“Is that what they were, now?” Oggie said, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Funny, I hadn’t heard that.” He seemed offended.

Martin cleared his throat. “So, Uncle, the bombing?”

“Oh, yes, yes, the goddamned Jerries. Who could forget them?” He launched into a long-winded description of what life on the island was like under threat of German air raids. They prepared as best they could but never really thought they’d get hit. “The noise was dreadful,” Oggie said. “It was like giants stamping across the island, and it seemed to go on for ages. No one in town was killed, though, thank heaven. Can’t say the same for the poor souls at the orphan home. One bomb was all it took.”

“Do you remember when it happened? Early in the war or late?”

“I can tell you the exact day,” he said. “It was the third of September, 1940.”

The air seemed to go out of the room. Johanna flashed to her grandmother’s ashen face, her lips just barely moving, uttering those very words. September third, 1940.

“Are you... you sure about that?”

“Oh, yes.”

Johanna felt numb, disconnected.

“And there weren’t any survivors at all?” Martin asked.

The old man thought for a moment, his gaze drifting up to the ceiling. “I reckon there were. ” he said, “Just one. A young girl, same age as you, lass. Walked into town the morning after with not a scratch upon her. Hardly seemed perturbed at all, considering she’d just seen all her mates go to their reward. It was the queerest thing.”

“She was probably in shock,” Martin said.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Oggie. “She spoke only once, to ask my father when the next boat was leaving for the mainland.”

“That was my grandmother,” Johanna said.

They looked at her, astonished. “Well,” Oggie said. “I’ll be blessed.”

Johanna excused herself and left. She took the long way back, past the swaying lights of the harbor. She walked to the end of a dock and watched the moon rise over the water, imagining Grandma Alice standing there on that awful morning after, numb with shock, waiting for a boat that would take her away from all the death she’d endured.

In the distance, she heard the generators sputter and spin down, and all the lights went dark.

She walked back by moonlight, feeling small. She found Mom in the pub at the same table where she’d been. “Look who’s back,” she said as Johanna sat down and told her what she’d learned.

“I can’t believe she never brought this up,” Mom said. “Not one time.”

Johanna tried to steer the conversation in a more positive direction. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Everything she went through.”

Mom nodded. “I don’t think we’ll ever know the full extent of it.”

“She really knew how to keep a secret, didn’t she?” Johanna glanced at her mom. “I wonder if it doesn’t explain why she acted so distant when you were little. She’d already lost her family twice before. Once in Poland and then again here. So when you and Aunt Susie came along…”

“Once bombed, twice shy?”

“I’m serious. Don’t you think this could mean that maybe she wasn’t cheating on Grandpa, after all?”

“I don’t know, Jo. I guess I don’t believe things are ever that simple.” She let out a sigh. “But it explains why you were so close. It took her fifty years to get over her fear of having a family. You came along at just the right time.”

Johanna didn’t know how to respond.

She tossed and turned most of the night. She couldn’t stop thinking about the letters, the one her mom had found as a kid, and the one she’d found from Miss Peregrine.

The postmark on Miss Peregrine’s letter was fifteen years old, but by all accounts she’d been blown into the stratosphere back in 1940.

She couldn’t make sense out of that and there was no one to ask. Anyone who might have had the answer was long dead. In less than twenty-four hours, the whole trip had become pointless.

Johanna fell into an uneasy sleep. At dawn, she woke to the sound of something in the room. Rolling over to see what it was, she bolted upright in bed. A large black bird was perched on her dresser, staring her down. Johanna stared back rigidly, wondering if this could be a dream.

She called out for her mom, and at the sound of her voice the bird launched itself off the dresser and flown out the open window.

Mom stumbled in, bleary-eyed. “What’s going on?” Johanna showed her the talon marks on the dresser and a feather that had landed on the floor. “God, that’s weird,” she said. “Peregrines almost never come this close to humans.”

Johanna thought maybe she’d heard her wrong. “What did you say?”

Mom held up the feather. “A peregrine falcon,” she said. “They’re amazing creatures, the fastest birds on earth.”

Over breakfast, Johanna began to wonder if she’d given up too easily. There was still the house, a lot of it unexplored. If it had ever held answers about her grandmother, they’d probably burned up or rotted away decades ago. But if she left the island without making sure, she’d regret it.

She left the pub and walked straight into a rain shower. She bent her head against the spitting rain and trudged onward. Soon she passed the shack, dim outlines of sheep huddled inside against the chill, and then the mist-shrouded bog, silent and ghostly.

By the time she reached the children’s home, what had begun as a drizzle was a full-on downpour. Johanna stood wringing water from her shirt and shaking out her hair, and when she was as dry as she was going to get, she began to search.

The ground floor was hopeless. She went back to the staircase, knowing this time she would have to climb it. The only question was, up or down? She decided on up.

The steps protested her weight, but they held, and what she discovered upstairs was like a time capsule. The rooms were in surprisingly good shape. It was easy to believe that everything was just as the children had left it, as if time had stopped the night they died.

Johanna went from room to room, examining their contents like an archaeologist. Eventually, she found a room that could only have belonged to Miss Peregrine. Johanna pictured the last time she’d been here. Was she scared? Did she hear the planes coming?

Johanna began to feel jumpy, like she was being watched. She drifted into the next room and, somehow, she knew that it had been Grandma’s Alice room.

Why did you send me here? What was it you needed me to see?

Then she noticed something beneath one of the beds and knelt down to look. It was an old suitcase.

Was this yours?

Johanna pulled it out and fumbled with its tattered leather straps. It opened easily, but except for a family of dead beetles, it was empty.

She felt empty, too. She sat on the bed, her bed, maybe, and for reasons she couldn’t quite explain, she closed her eyes and pushed her knuckles in to stop them from hurting, and when she finally released the pressure and opened them again, a miraculous change had come over the room: there was a single ray of sun shining through the window.

In the patch of quickly fading sun that fell across the room, she noticed something she hadn’t before. It was a trunk under the second bed. It was a big old steamer trunk latched with a giant rusting padlock. It couldn’t possibly be empty.

Johanna grabbed it by the sides and pulled. It didn’t move. She pulled again, harder, but it wouldn’t give an inch. She stood up and kicked it a few times, which seemed to jar things loose, and then she managed to move it by pulling on one side at a time, shimmying it forward, until it had come out all the way from under the bed. She briefly considered searching for a key, but a better option was to just break it.

She hunkered down behind the trunk and began pushing it toward the hall. Before long she’d gotten it out of the room and was dragging it, foot by foot, doorway by doorway, toward the landing. When she made it, with one final push, she threw it down the edge.

It fell, tumbling end over end in beautiful balletic slow-motion. There came a tremendous echoing crash that seemed to rattle the whole house and the trunk fell straight through the floor into the basement, leaving a jagged trunk-shaped hole in the floorboards.

Johanna raced downstairs and wriggled up to the edge of the buckled floor on her belly. Fifteen feet below, through a haze of dust and darkness, she saw what remained of the trunk. It had shattered like a giant egg, its pieces all mixed up in a heap of debris and smashed floorboards. Scattered throughout were little pieces of paper. Squinting, she could make out shapes on them, faces, bodies, and that’s when she realized they weren’t letters at all, but photographs. Dozens of them.

Now excited, she descended the creaking stairs and into the dark basement. A weak glimmer of daylight came from the hole she’d made. Johanna picked her way through the wreckage and began to salvage what she could from the pile.

At first glance, the pictures looked like the kind you’d find in any old family album. And the more Johanna studied the pictures, the more familiar they began to seem. She began to remember the stories Grandma Alice used to tell her. Those fantastic stories. That any of them could be true, literally true, seemed unthinkable. And yet, standing there in dusty half-light in that dead house that seemed so alive with ghosts, Johanna thought, maybe...

Suddenly there came a loud crash from somewhere in the house above her, and Johanna startled so badly that all the pictures slipped from her hands.

It’s just the house settling, she told herself, but as she bent down to gather the photos, the crash came again, and in an instant what meager light had shone through the hole in the floor faded away, and Johanna found herself squatting in inky darkness.

She heard footsteps, and then voices. She strained to make out what they were saying, but couldn’t. She tried to get up, as quietly as she could. A tiny piece of something came loose from the pile and rolled away, making a sound that seemed huge in the silence. The voices went quiet. Then a floorboard creaked right over her head and a little shower of plaster dust sprinkled down. Whoever was up there, they knew exactly where she was.

Johanna held her breath.

Then, she heard a boy’s voice say softly, “Alice? Is that you?”

Johanna thought she’d dreamed it. She waited for him to speak again, but for a long moment there was only the sound of rain banking off the roof. Then a lantern glowed to life above her, and she craned her neck to see a half dozen kids kneeling around the craggy jaws of broken floor, peering down.

She recognized them somehow. They seemed like faces from a half-remembered dream. Their clothes, their pale unsmiling faces... They were the kids from the photographs.

The boy who’d spoken stood up to get a better look at her. In his hands he held a flickering light, which seemed to be a ball of raw flame, attended by nothing more than his bare skin. Johanna had seen his picture not five minutes earlier, and in it he looked much the same as he did now.

His expression soured. Whatever he and the others had been expecting to find inside this hole in the floor, Johanna was not it.

A murmur passed among them, and they stood up and quickly scattered. Their sudden movement knocked something loose in her and Johanna found her voice again and shouted for them to wait, but they were already pounding the floorboards toward the door. Johanna tripped through the wreckage and stumbled blindly across the stinking basement to the stairs. But by the time she made it back to the ground floor, they had vanished from the house.

She bolted outside, screaming, “Wait! Stop!” But they were gone.

Johanna scanned the yard, the woods. Something snapped beyond the trees. She wheeled around to look and, through a screen of branches, caught a flash of blurred movement. It was him. Johanna crashed into the woods, sprinting after. The boy took off running down the path.

He kept trying to lose her, cutting from the path into the trackless forest and back. Finally the woods fell away and they broke into open bogland. Johanna sped up and just as she started to catch up, he made a sudden turn and plunged straight into the bog. She followed.

Running became impossible. The ground couldn’t be trusted. The boy, however, seemed to know just where to step, and he pulled farther and farther away, finally disappearing into the mist.

Johanna ended up before a mound of stones. It looked like a big gray igloo, but it was a cairn, a little taller than her, long and narrow with a rectangular opening in one end, like a door, and she saw that the opening was the entrance to a tunnel that burrowed deep inside.

And enter she did.

#hollowgasts #the second soul #fanfic #genderbend #johanna roseberg #dfcrosas #sophie lowe #fem jacob portman #miss peregrine #peculiar children #male emma bloom #gustave wolff

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imagineclaireandjamie · 7 years

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Flood my Mornings: Thanks

Anon said: If the stable chapter was in October doesn’t Bree have a birthday coming up? how is she going to do with the terrible twos ?

Notes from Mod Bonnie:

This story takes place in an AU in which Jamie travels through the stones two years after Culloden and finds Claire and his child in 1950 Boston.

See all past installments via Bonnie’s Master List

Previous installment: Eggs (Attack of the Pregnancy Brain!)

November 23rd, 1950

“Happy Thanksgiving, Frasers!” Marian Harper sang out as she opened the door.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” we chorused in return, arms full of Bree and wine and basket of lemon meringue pie.

“Oof, come in out of the rain,” she clucked, ushering us into the warmth of her cozy foyer. “Though I guess we should thank our lucky stars it’s only rain, not the blizzard they’re getting down south!”

“Oh, aye,” Jamie agreed, deftly extricating Bree from her raincoat while still holding her. “Made it a bit slow-going on the drive over, but much preferable to snow.”

“And the rain’s good luck for Miss Bree! Happy BIRTHDAY, sweet pea!”

Thus addressed, Bree giggled and lurched forward into Marian’s arms, surprising all of us.

“Glad to see she’s finally getting less intent on clinging only to Mama and Da,” I laughed.

Jamie helped me out of my coat and sweetly kissed my cheek as we followed Marian into the living room. “I suppose being properly two years of age makes a difference, after all!”

Earlier that day

“Our wee lass doesna appear to be verra sensible of the grand occasion, Sassenach.”

I wiped my hands and turned quickly from the stove (which YES, I’d managed to turn on, thank you very much), beaming. Sure enough, Bree seemed about as interested in festivities as the average boulder. She had both arms around Jamie’s neck and was making it quite clear she was not in the mood to be up and about.

“Well, I suppose she doesn’t remember her last one, little as she was,” I conceded, coming close to tickle Bree lightly in the side. “Guess what, lovey-dove? It’s your BIRTHDAY!”

The dramatic excitement in my tone made her bolt upright at once, hair wild: curlywig to end all curlywigs. “S’bird-day?” she demanded.

“Yes, baby, it’s your birthday!”

“What-is ‘at, Mama? Mama?” She continued to screw her face up at me in concentration as Jamie buckled her in to the high chair. “What-IS ‘at, bird-day? Mama? Mama, what?”

“It means ,” Jamie offered, settling next to her and putting out one of his hands for hers, “the day you were *born,* a leannan.”

“What-is-it, ‘borrnd,’ Daddy?”

“It means the day God gave ye to Mama and me,” he said patiently, “So, it’s a verra special day, aye?”

“What-is-’at?” she said immediately, lacing her fingers together and flapping them about. “Daddy, dinna kennit. What is-’at ‘spedchill’?”

Jamie sighed, love and exasperation so perfectly mingled in that way unique to parents. “’Special’ means…the verra best. Just like you, sweet wee cub.”

“See my-dese jammies?” she chirped, changing direction with lightning speed. “Dey’re porpoor, Daddy, see’um?”

“Aye,” he laughed, “I see, a leannan.”

She pulled at the fabric of her top. “Dey’re spedchill?”

“Aye, those are verra SPECIAL purple Jammies,” he said, meeting my eye and trying not to laugh.

“Your birthday,” I said significantly, walking over to them with Bree’s breakfast held high, “is the day where Mama and Daddy talk about how JUST how much we LOVE our Bree.” I bent and latched onto her sweet, dimpled cheek in a huge, long mmmmmm-ing kiss and Jamie came in to do the same on the other. Bree, caught between us in a smooch sandwich, was giggling so hard she was fit to choke.

“Those are your first presents,” I said pulling back. “Two kisses for your second birthday. And here’s the next!” I slid the plate onto the tray in front of her for inspection.

“Sassenach….That is…” Jamie looked up at me with the queerest expression on his face. “…the *Cutest* thing I’ve ever seen.”

It was little more than a circle with two lopsided ears, but I’d embellished a snout with banana slices and chocolate chips for nose and eyes, and powdered sugar to top things off.

Yes, it was fairly bloody adorable.

Bree squealed. “Issa—Lookint-’im-that-wee BEAR, Daddy!” She hooted in delight and then began promptly to demolish said wee bear.

“You’d best slow down, mo chridhe!” Jamie laughed. “He’s going to roar in your tummy for gobbling him up so fast!”

Bree’s mouth was so full she couldn’t reply, but there came a happy, muffled *mmphurr!?!* that signified her excitement to see this play out as soon as humanly (bearly?) possible.

“So neither of you have ever had Thanksgiving before?” Tom asked as he poured Jamie a glass of wine in the sitting room.

“No, indeed!” I settled back onto the sofa with a cup of tea. “A singularly American holiday, this one.”

Tom furrowed his brows. “But you were here stateside last year too, weren’t you, Claire?”

“Oh, yes, well….Yes, but I wasn’t in the going-out frame of mind, to be honest.”

“It was a different life, before you came back, Jamie,” Marian said knowingly, beaming from the floor, where Bree was sitting on her lap playing with her birthday present from the Harpers. “We’re glad you did.”

“As am I, a nighean,” he said warmly to her, then met eyes with me. Glad doesna even begin to express it.

It would have been a thoroughly lovely moment, except morning sickness had come a-calling with a VENGEANCE today, and I had to close my eyes while yet another urge to vomit abated.

Jamie noticed and made as if to come to me, but just then, the doorbell rang, followed almost immediately thereafter by Della O’Malley running head-on into Jamie and nearly spilling his wine as she barreled around the corner. He managed to catch her with his free hand, and she looked as though he’d hung the bloody moon. “Hi, Mr. Fraser,” she said breathlessly, gazing up into his face.

“Happy Thanksgiving to ye, Miss Della.” He kissed her hand, which sent her into paroxysms. Jesus H. Christ, the girl needed a cold shower, pronto.

Thankfully, though, it seemed her glow wasn’t *entirely* due to infatuation with Jamie. “Claire! Claire, guess what?” she said, bouncing in my direction.

“Peter asked you to go steady?” She’d been talking about this boy for weeks, it was about time he made a move.

“YES!!!” she squealed, thudding into a chair next to me. “Can you BELIEVE IT!??!”

“Wine, Claire?” Tom said, coming over with a glass.

“Oh, no, thank you.”

“Whisky, then?

“No, thank you, Tom, I’m all—” Good Heavens, I nearly burped in the poor man’s face, but managed to choke back the wave of acute nausea and croak, “— all set with my tea.”

I could have sworn Marian gave me a suspicious look, but thankfully, Jamie came to my aid. “So, from what I gather, the festivity centers around coming together and eating in a spirit of gratitude. But that’s about all I ken of it. Is there more?”

I had told him the story earlier that morning, in fact, but I was grateful for the diversion while Tom gave the Proud Son of Massachusetts recitation of the Thanksgiving tale.

Jamie nodded in approval. “Thanks be to God for the kindness of the native folk, then. I must say, I enjoy hearing tales of anyone that managed to fly in the face of the English crown—Sorry Sassenach,” he added with a grin.

“Does Scotland not belong to England?” Della asked, bewildered.

“Depends on who ye ask,” Jamie laughed. “Suffice it to say, there’s a reason the marriage between Claire and me raised no small number of eyebrows.”

“But you married anyway,” Della swooned, “how roMANTIC!!”

Jamie grinned and sat down next to me. “Verra romantic indeed.” He saw my pallor and squeezed my hand, speaking low so only I could hear. “Are ye feeling alright, Sassenach?”

“Bit queasy,” I admitted, resisting the urge to clutch my abdomen.

“Can I get ye anything?”

“No,” I whispered, squeezing his hand. “But thank you. Just have to wait for young Fraser here to settle down.”

He smiled and ducked his head, trying not to let the others see the direction of his tender gaze.

We had agreed not to announce the pregnancy until the three-month mark, as was customary. We knew better than anyone that tragedy could still strike after the first trimester, but had decided that for Brianna’s sake, at least, it was best to wait until the highest risk of miscarriage was past….even though acknowledging the possibility of losing another child sent claws of fear tearing at my heart.

But I’d carried one child safely; Lord willing, I could do so again.

Please, Lord, keep this little one safe.

Jamie wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me closer. “I am thankful, today, ye ken?” he whispered.

“Oh?” I murmured back, looking into his eyes, curious, but already smiling from the tone in his voice. “Whatever for?”

“For our daughter. For you carrying her. Giving her life, this day two years ago. For—” His voice caught, just barely. “—For how ye went on living when ye didna wish to…” He gently touched my face. “For working as hard as ye do, at home and at the hospital….For being my wife. For….well…” He very discreetly touched my belly. “For our children. And for taking care of us in this new world”

I ran my hand down the side of his face, unable to speak as I kissed him. Come what might in 1951, never had I had a year in which there was so much for which to give thanks as 1950.

“I’m going to shrivel up and DIE from how much you love each other,” came Della’s tremulous threat. “Just you WAIT.”

[more to come]

#;mod bonnie #Flood my mornings #in which everyone ships it #but mostly Della #who is all of us #it's been an FMM bucket list to have Jamie say 'jammies'#also I've given y'all a nice batch of fluffs these last few weeks. brace yo self

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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Why Beauty and the Beast isn’t the first Disney movie for LGBT audiences

The studio has promised fans its first exclusively gay moment in the live-action fairytale but that betrays a history of covert messages in its animated films

Its unprecedented for a major studio blockbuster, much less a family film, to pursue the LGBT audience. Gay viewers seeking mainstream self-identification in the cinema have usually had to settle for winking nuances and allusions, or at worst, the more oblivious homoeroticism of sundry Michael Bay-style brawnfests. No more, apparently: in an age when a film as overtly queer as Moonlight can win the establishment honour of a best picture Oscar, a corporation as large as Disney can also finally acknowledge the love that once dared not speak its name.

Well, sort of. A flurry of headlines ranging from the overly enthused to the overly outraged greeted Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condons announcement in Attitude magazine that the Mouse Houses live-action remake of their 1991 fairytale smash would boast the companys first exclusively gay moment. The more we heard about this supposedly startling breakthrough, however, the less encouraging it got. Historys first overtly gay Disney character, it turns out, is LeFou, unctuous manservant to preening, hyper-macho villain Gaston an underling who, in Condons words, on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston.

An obsequious servant who alternates between worshipping and hopelessly desiring his straight master? With a name that translates as madman and has also been used as a gay slur in French? In the reliably aggravating form of Josh Gad? Its not exactly the recognition that gay viewers have been waiting for, even if the finished film gives LeFou the most fleeting of hints at future romance with a kindred spirit.

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Condon, a gay film-maker known for such intelligent queer investigations as Gods and Monsters and Kinsey, must realise that this is no giant leap forward for on-screen representation, though credit him for stoking the off-screen conversation on the subject. This week has also seen him advancing the theory, allegedly founded by the 1991 films late lyricist Howard Ashman, that the Beasts story functions as a metaphor for Aids: He was cursed and this curse had brought sorrow on all those people who loved him and maybe there was a chance for a miracle and a way for the curse to be lifted, Condon explains. The phrasing is wince-inducing its fair to say most people with Aids would prefer not to think of themselves as cursed, or indeed as beasts but its a bolder way to queer the material than working a comic-relief subplot around a secondary characters sexuality.

Exclusively gay is a curious turn of phrase, not least when appealing to a community for whom inclusivity has always been a higher priority. One presumes Condons implication is that LeFous desires are unambiguously homosexual, not that theyre identifiable or relatable exclusively to gay viewers. For Disney animation has a long history of LGBT coding, intended and otherwise, that makes Beauty and the Beasts more official gay gestures look rather colourless.

Disney may not have granted a gay identity to any of its characters prior to LeFou, but audiences have been doing so for decades. A quick graze of the internet will provide fan theories to feed any hunches youve long felt about the happy-go-lucky companionship of Timon and Pumbaa, and their effective adoption of baby Simba, in The Lion King or indeed the foppish villainy of the same films Scar, an alpha lion who has never found a mate in the pride. Same goes for Baloo, the nurturing, carefree single bear of The Jungle Book, or the coy, eyelash-batting male skunk who introduces himself to young fawn Bambi with the immortal words, You can call me Flower if you want to. A few playful Disney animators have even teased us with queer allusions of their own: the character design of Ursula, the vampy, spectacularly tentacled sea witch of The Little Mermaid, was famously modelled on superstar drag queen Divine.

Speculating in this manner can be superficial, stereotype-dependent fun but doesnt really get to the essentially queer heart of so many classic Disney narratives, in which socially isolated outsiders yearn either for acceptance or transcendence. Pinocchios dream of being a real boy is a journey of self-actualisation that has prompted many a metaphorical comparison to the coming-out process; the same goes for sweet, sensitive Dumbo, whose chief point of difference from the rest those enormous ears at first makes him a figure of fun for bullying peers, before it enables him to soar.

Photograph: Allstar/Disney

Its not just the boys, of course. Pocahontas and Beauty and the Beasts Belle are marked early on as different from the other girls. Ditto the Little Mermaids Ariel, whose desire not just to change her circumstances but change her physical form has made her an unlikely object of identification among some younger members of the transgender community a girl who believes herself literally born in the wrong body. (Her ballad Part of Your World, meanwhile, is something of an all-purpose anthem for LGBT not-belongers.)

Fairytale convention may have locked these rebellious women into wholly heterosexual romantic ambitions, but Disney excitingly strayed from that rulebook in 2013 with Frozen, its record-busting rewrite of The Snow Queen. In Elsa, Frozen gave us a magically touched heroine who requires no male partner to complete her self-realisation. Fleeing the community while she independently comes to terms with her difference, she belts out Let It Go, a now-ubiquitous tune that not only became an instant Disney standard, but launched a million queer readings for its celebratory revelation of a once-hidden identity: Conceal, dont feel/ Dont let them know/ well now they know the fears that once controlled me cant get to me at all.

The film didnt give Elsa a girlfriend following her arguable coming-out, though fans are clamoring for one to be introduced in the upcoming Frozen 2. But down to its same-sex twist on the hoary old true loves kiss trope yes, theyre sisters, but its refreshing to see the supposedly all-healing properties of straight love taken down a notch its a film fully alive to its queerest subtextual possibilities. That may not make it Disneys first exclusively gay narrative, whatever that exactly means. But if were at a watershed moment regarding open LGBT representation in the multiplex, the absurd, conservative figure of LeFou hardly deserves all the credit for the changes that lie ahead.