“I have family members that are homosexuals. I have a relationship with them. I love them. It does not mean I’m a bigot,” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m not judging them when I tell you that God’s word says this, that’s not me. That’s God’s word.”

The owners are censoring a film they have not seen: Ms. Laney said they had only seen a trailer and an article that mentioned the gay character. The reimagined “Beauty and the Beast,” directed by Bill Condon, will not be distributed anywhere by Disney until March 17. But Mr. Condon created an online dust-up this week when he told a British magazine that a supporting character, LeFou, played by Josh Gad, has “a nice, exclusively gay moment” at the end of the film.

For much of the movie, Mr. Gad plays the character as a slightly effeminate man with a pretty obvious crush on the dashing villain Gaston. (LeFou is basically Gaston’s lackey.) The moment Mr. Condon appeared to reference comes in the final scene, when (spoiler alert) LeFou is shown — for about three seconds — dancing with another fellow.

The Henagar Drive-In Facebook page was flooded with more than 1,300 comments on Friday. Many supported its ban. The majority of commenters, however, condemned the theater for homophobia and hypocrisy. As Chris Martinetti wrote, “A drive-in theater is so perfectly apt for your prehistoric ideologies.”

Ms. Laney, 56, said that for every negative comment, “I’m getting 20 to 30 positives,” and she was emphatic that she would not change her mind about the film.