IGF CultureWatch

Dale Carpenter's newly posted critique of Brokeback Mountain has provoked spirited debate in gay papers where it's been publshed. My own supportive views toward the film have already been stated, but here are some other interesting takes.

Guest blogger Ross Douthat of the Atlantic, on Andrew Sullivan's site, has positive things to say but also argues that:

The straight men are all either strutting oafs, bitter bigots like Jack Twist's father, or "nice-guy" weaklings like Alma's second husband, whose well-meaning effeminacy contrasts sharply with Ennis's rugged manliness. Jack and Ennis are the only "real men" in the story, and their love is associated with the high country and the vision of paradise it offers-a world of natural beauty and perfect freedom, of wrestling matches and campfires and naked plunges into crystal rivers-and a world with no girls allowed. Civilization is women and babies and debts and fathers-in-law and bosses; freedom is the natural world, and the erotic company of men. It's an old idea of the pre-Christian world come round again-not that gay men are real men too; but that real men are gay.

Blogger Tim Hulsey is critical of some of the critics, observing that:

David Letterman in particular has conducted a one-man crusade against the "gay cowboy movie," and Nathan Lane famously performed a minstrel-show Broadway parody of Brokeback on the Today show.

That the openly gay Lane would attack the film is less surprising than it would seem: I suspect that gay men who have adopted an ironic "camp" sensibility as a personal defense mechanism will prove especially resistant to the film. When I saw Brokeback in D.C.'s Dupont Circle, one young gay man heckled the screen, Rocky Horror style. He sounded like the sort of fellow who was beaten throughout high school, and who learned that a withering wit can be the best defense of the powerless. In a strange way, he seemed to belong on the screen with Jack and Ennis.

And finally, this piece by a gay escort is surprisingly sad, as he predicts a rise in his clientele:

Students graduate, soldiers return to citizenry, and so the one-shot lovers must say goodbye. And like Jack and Ennis, many of my clients went on to pass year after wistful year in a life nature never truly intended. Until something happened. ...

Ostensible business trips to the coast will be scheduled, where men like me lie in wait. After the second or third time a man trucks back home to International Falls from the multiplex, and then maybe the gay bar, in Duluth, the family computer's potential to track down his bible camp paramour may prove too tempting. Men will take risks after seeing this film.

Which may, I suppose, lead back to Carpenter's concerns about hurt wives and abandoned kids (or alternatively, liberated souls now free to love). But whatever your response, a film that provokes reactions this strong is a force to be reckoned with, I reckon.

TV's Larry David won't be seeing Brokeback Mountain. He says, in fact,

cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat, and even then I would make every effort to close my eyes and cover my ears.

But rest assured, some of his best friends are gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Meanwhile, in Britain's The Guardian, John Patterson remarks that the American western "has always throbbed with latent homoeroticism." And that Brokeback

wouldn't be in the least controversial...were America not unimaginably neurotic and puritanical about sex, straight or gay, in the first place.

He could call Larry David as his first witness.

More: Stephen Hunter, the Washington Post's movie critic, presents a similar examination in a piece titled Out in the West: Reexamining A Genre Saddled With Subtext."

More Recent Postings
12/25/05 - 12/31/05

From the Ithaca Journal, here is an excellent op-ed on how we might benefit from overcoming our political insularity. Janis Kelly writes that:

All around me in Ithaca I see fairly bright people talking and listening only to each other, confident of the superiority of their own ideas, openly contemptuous of those who might not agree.... This provincial, almost tribal, insularity deprives us of a certain social richness, as well as of opportunities to hone our political thinking....

Most of America is more sophisticated about political integration. There is a tradition of political generosity, of not shunning or demonizing your neighbors who hold different political views. And most people have lots of neighbors who hold different views. That basic decency has broken down in Washington and in segregationist enclaves like Ithaca.

To say the least!

For those who donated during our end-of-year drive (hint: there's still time), many, many thanks. Onward to 2006!

More: North Dallas Thirty (whose website is always worth a visit) takes on some of this site's antagonists whose consistently uncivil behavior even in response to an item about promoting political civility is distressing if unsurprising. NDT writes:

This whole article is about broadening one's experiences in the hopes of finding common understanding, because that is the basis of civility and good behavior. It is hard to hate someone with whom you share something in common.

This is why gay leftists, which seem to be the bulk of the commentors on this board, work so hard to demonize people and shunt people away from such experiences. For even daring to say one thing positive about [black conservative] LaShawn Barber, [a commenter] has been getting pounded and getting called every name in the book. Stephen is getting beaten up for even daring to link to [this article].

Both the knee-jerk gay left and the anti-gay right are victims of a rigid ideology, and both become visibly upset whenever their ideas are challanged. But the persistent comments attacking this site-by some who post repeatedly during each and every day-is the perfect testimony of why it is so important that we exist.

Dr. Charles Socarides, a psychiatrist who gained notoriety for his claimed ability to "cure" homosexuals of their "disorder," has passed into the great beyond. The New York Times obit mentions he was married four times. Since Socarides was often cited by anti-gay "defense of marriage" types, one can only ponder which of his four marriages was being defended.

The most interesting thing about him, however, was that his openly gay son was Bill Clinton's liaison to the lesbian and gay community. Can you say "dysfunctional family"?

Over at Positive Liberty, Jon Rowe takes Socarides death as an opportunity to share some thoughts on the misuse of the mental health profession to enforce social norms.

Among the saddest developments for the gay community this past year may be the transformation of the group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) from an organization that sought to create dialogue among straights and gays into a knee-jerk, Daily Kos-ite arm of the Democratic National Committee. I can remember several years back speaking to PFLAG's then executive director at a Republican Unity Coalition event, where she was the only representative who chose to attend from any of the supposedly nonpartisan gay lobbies. But that was then. Now, under current executive leader Jody Huckaby, PFLAG deviates no more from politically correct lesbigay leftism.

The language the group deployed to attack the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts tells all. PFLAG's Huckaby wailed that "We cannot sit back and allow a man with a demonstrated record of hostility towards privacy and minority rights to make decisions on our nation's highest court that will affect this nation for generations to come." Say what? Could that be the John Roberts who did pro bono work on behalf of the gay attorneys arguing Romer vs. Evans, the landmark Supreme Court case which successfully struck down a 1992 Colorado amendment prohibiting localities from enforcing gay-inclusive nondiscrimination protections?

Now PFLAG is working to derail the nomination of Sam Alito, and its press statement disingenuously cites a case in which Alito ruled that a public school non-harassment policy went too far toward curtailing free speech, while ignoring another Alito ruling in favor of a harassed gay student (as I recounted most recently here).

The loss of PFLAG to the partisan left leaves us with no significant national organization that seeks to forge a broad consensus for gay equality (aside, arguably, from the religious groups like Soulforce, God bless 'em). And that's why I think it's the saddest gay development of the year.

More: Reader "Another Jim" comments:

The original mission was outreach to angry, scared, and misinformed parents who've learned that their child is gay. It was basically a self-help group, parents helping parents.

Something began to change when it went from "Parents and Families" to "Parents, Families and Friends." These "friends" seem to be standard issue gay activists, and PFLAG is now fast becoming a clone of NGLTF.

What does this mean for parents, many of whom no doubt are Republicans, who may turn to PFLAG seeking information and support? When they catch drift of the intense anti-GOP politicking, they're not likely to be receptive to the message of openess and acceptance that, once upon a time, was PFLAG's reason for being. And that's a shame.

Yes, it is.

Iraq-war opposing, Republican-despising, political cartoonist Jeff Danziger (distributed by the New York Times Syndicate) compares the love between two cowboys to a sexual relationship between a cowboy and his horse.

Danziger last year portrayed Condoleezza Rice as Prissy in Gone with the Wind, to the delight of the administration's critics (that cartoon is no longer online, but here's a description). What's a little racism-or homophobia-when you're a LIBERAL?

By the way, to date I haven't seen any of the gay watchdogs criticize Maureen Dowd's hateful Brokeback column. As noted previously, liberal Bush-hater MoDo offered that "'High Plains Drifter' now sounds like a guy who might get arrested in a bus station bathroom." Remember, kiddies, no enemies on the left.

More Recent Postings
12/18/05 - 12/24/05

We've posted Paul Varnell's intriguing column tracing the Vatican's latest attacks on homosexuality to Freud's views. Hopefully, if we receive enough contributions-and please contribute if you haven't-we can shift to a design that incorporates a comments area for all our articles as well as for this blog (which now sits on an entirely different platform).

Anyway, I would take issue with the notion that Freud in a larger sense has been debunked (do we no longer accept the subconscious, or the meaning of dreams?), although on certain points he's been revised and expanded upon. And his "Letter to an American Mother," which gets Paul's ire up, is actually a surprisingly accepting view of homosexuals, especially given the time (there's a link to letter text in the article, so readers can judge for themselves).

Two headlines from this week's Washington Blade: Gay, AIDS groups oppose Alito and Bush declines to name [openly gay D.C. Attorney General Robert] Spagnoletti for judgeship. Only in lesbigay political never-never land would gay activists think they can vehemently oppose all of the president's judicial nominees, and then expect he should reward our community by appointing a gay judge.

I sometimes think gay activists are the only people in D.C. who don't have a clue how politics works-or, more depressingly, they do know but care more about being on the left and losing (which is actually better for their fundraising efforts), then making progress.

More: From reader Curtis:

Bush doesn't owe the critics of his judicial nominations anything, that's for sure. And LCR's failure to support his re-election pretty much rules them out as effective lobbyists.

So Bush gets a free ride with all those gay Bush voters who have no institutional lobbyist in Washington.

Gay activists to Bush: We will never, ever, EVER support you. Now, here's what we want!

Exactly.

Congrats to the happy couple. As the NY Times reports:

The most striking thing, in fact, about the people gathered along the streets of Windsor today for Sir Elton John's civil partnership ceremony with his boyfriend, David Furnish, was how little they appeared to care, one way or the other, about the couple's sexuality....

Although the legislation stops short of calling the new arrangement marriage...it does give gay couples legal rights similar to those of married people on matters like inheritance, immigration and pensions, as well as responsibilities in areas like child-rearing.

But here in the U.S., for both advocates and opponents, all that seems to matter is keeping it about the "M" word.

Author Annie Proulx had this to say in a recent interview with the AP:

AP: Have you gotten any response from gay organizations?
Proulx: No. When the story was first published eight years ago [in the New Yorker], I did expect that. But there was a deafening silence. What I had instead were letters from individuals, gay people, some of them absolutely heartbreaking.

Guess gay groups have been too busy honoring "Jack" from Will & Grace!

Meanwhile, the anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition quotes "ex-homosexuals" condemning the movie and encouraging closeted and married (to women) gay men to stay with their wives. Says one:

"Believe me, we can sadly expect to see a lot more men like former Governor Jim McGreevy of New Jersey not only resigning from their jobs, but from their wives, children and families."

But as I read on another list in response to the TVC, "it doesn't occur to these people that a better way to prevent cases like McGreevey's is not to pressure gay people into straight relationships in the first place, but instead to support them as they are."

No, it wouldn't occur to them. Not for a second.