Film still inspires bigots to fume

The religiously challenged just can’t get over rabid hatred for gay people. And it seems Brokeback Mountain just brings these bigots out of the woodwork. The film is now showing in Jamaica and the bigots are out in force spitting out their protests.

Neil Lewis, of the Family (sic) Life Ministries says he is “very distressed” because the film is being shown. Presumably he must fear someone dragging him in, kicking and screaming, and forcing him to watch the movie. Otherwise I can’t see how it’s any of his business if others see it or not.

But these buzzing insects of religion prefer to buzz around annoying others. And Lewis says: “We are allowing Hollywood to swamp us with wrong things. It’s dragging us down in the maelstrom of immorality.” How this film drags him down into anything is beyond me. No one is forcing any of those with theological lobotomies to watch the film.

Allan Russell of the Emmanuel Apostolic Church demanded that the film be banned and said it was an attempt to “indoctrinate the world to a most sinful act.”

What irritates them is not so much whether they are required to see such films. They aren’t. What bothers them is that they are not allowed to tell others what they may watch.

One particularly demented conservative, from the inaccurately named group Accuracy in Media, by the name of Cliff Kincaid, has insinuated that gay films may the cause of terrorist attacks on America or could be. He said he hoped “radical Islamists don’t watch the Academy Awards that night and get even more motivated to kill us.” Of course these Islamists wouldn’t kill one of their own so Kincaid is probably safe.

Kincaid, like his fellow extremists, is either very dishonest or just a bad writer. It’s hard to tell which since both are plausible explanations. He described Brokeback Mountain as “the film that depicts homosexual relations between married men with children as normal and even healthy.” Now the way that sentence is written he is saying the film shows married gay men having sex with children.

Of course, as I said, it could be just incompetent writing and what he meant to do was add some commas in the proper places so it said: ‘depicts homosexual relations between married men, with children, as normal and even healthy.” Those two commas make a huge difference. But I checked his writing carefully and he left them out entirely changing the meaning to one entirely different --- and entirely false. I will leave it up to him to confess whether he’s incompetent at his craft or just dishonest.

The film continues to do well at the box office even though a huge drop off is normally expected this many weeks after the initial release. The film has grossed around $75 million in the US and another $45 million overseas so far. it appears to be headed toward being the third most popular gay themed film in box office revenue only trailing The Birdcage and Interview with the Vampire.

The BAFTA awards in England were good news for the film as well. And if it does as well at the Academy Awards as expected there will be a large boost at the box office. In related news Jake Gyllenhaal recently auctioned off the two shirts that play a major symbol in the film. Gyllenhaal put the shirts on Ebay to benefit Variety The Children’s Charity. With 11 seconds left before the end of the auction the shirts were won with a bid of $101,100.51.