Despite rumours, a satirical website post, and perhaps some wishful thinking, the Disney studio has not officially outed the character and it doesn't seem to have figured in the filmmakers' thinking (see snopes.com).

But homosexuality could and has been read a subtext - Elsa hiding a part of herself, the line "Born this way or cursed?", Let It Go as a coming-out anthem - and lots of Disney films, from now to going back to the early days, feature protagonists who are different and don't fit in to their communities or families (big-eared Dumbo, puppet Pinocchio, bookworm Belle). That doesn't make them gay, of course, and such themes can resonate with anyone who feels like an outsider. But then, many queer kids would.

An argument could also be made for the films' conservatism: even if the films don't have love stories that end happily and heterosexually - ever after, most could not be said to fundamentally question the status quo.

That's not to say Disney is anti-gay - far from it, at least not nowadays. The company has been increasingly gay-friendly - Gay Days at the theme parks, health benefits for employees' partners - to the point where some very conservative folk are decrying Disney, even though they are simply acknowledging reality.

And the films are flirting with ideas that some would call outrageous, but others would shrug at or complain they don't go far enough. However fleeting the moments, LeFou in the live-action/CGI Beauty and the Beast and Oaken in Frozen seem likely to be intended to be read as gay, at least by audiences alert to such things.

Some have read other characters as queer. Certainly the animated Scar in The Lion King seems stereotypically effete and sardonic. He also shows no interest in lionesses. The villainess Ursula in The Little Mermaid was modelled in part on drag queen Divine. That these characters, among others, are villains might be seen as disturbing, but there are positive representations too.

Despite - or perhaps because of - Walt Disney's personal conservatism, it seems characters being "coded" as gay, with recognised stereotypical "sissy" traits, go back a long way. Whether this was intended as an in-joke, tapping into a popular trope, or an attack is open to question: my guess would be the second, since a lot of live-action movies had similar characters and some actors, like Edward Everett Horton, made a career out of them.

In the 1935 short Who Killed Cock Robin?, Cupid is depicted as a lisping, high-voiced, limp-wristed character, much like the title character in The Reluctant Dragon (an animated segment in the 1941 feature of the same name). The fey, British-accented dragon, like Ferdinand the Bull in the 1938 short of the same name, is not interested in attacking people. The dragon likes poetry and tea and the bull likes to sit and smell the flowers.

While the depictions are somewhat stereotypical, they're not unsympathetic - though their characters' pacifism could be viewed as either positive or negative, especially given the US's involvement in World War II was approaching.

No doubt there will be more to come on this issue as Disney tries to satisfy different fan bases. Frozen III, anyone?