As in Maryland, where Republicans tried to revive a
constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the floor of
that state's House of Delegates, but Democrats
squelched the move. Kudos to them. Still, Tim Maloney, who
served for 16 years as a Democratic member of the Maryland
legislature,
blasts gay marriage proponents.
More Recent Postings
01/29/06 - 02/04/06
First published, in slightly different form, in The Indianapolis Star on February 6, 2006.
Now that director Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain has lassoed eight Academy Award nominations, millions more Americans likely will see it. Social conservatives should be among those who catch this widely lauded motion picture.
Socio-cons probably have sidestepped this so-called "gay cowboy movie." Too bad. While it hardly screams "family values," Brokeback seriously engages profound issues that merit consideration by those who think seriously about the challenges that families face.
Stylistically, socio-cons need not fear Brokeback as a didactic, in-your-face, gay screed. "We're here. We're queer. Who dropped the saddle soap?" it is not. Nor is this film a flamboyant camp-fest, like the flighty but hilarious The Birdcage or much of The Producers, both coincidentally starring Nathan Lane.
Indeed, as a romance between two thoroughly masculine ranch hands, Brokeback begins to reverse the damage caused by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and similar offerings that reinforce the stereotype that gay men are indispensable when one needs to select fabulous neckties or striking pastels for stunning interiors. How sad that such entertainment still elicits laughs, even as most Americans would be justifiably outraged at any show titled Jewish Guy with a Banker's Eye or The Mexican Gardening Hour.
Beyond equating same-sex affection with manliness, Brokeback addresses important matters on the political agenda. It is impossible to discuss these themes without revealing key plot points. So, if you have not seen Brokeback, please do so soon, then finish this op-ed after the credits roll.
Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar, movingly portrayed by Academy Award nominees Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, respectively, find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other one booze-filled evening in 1963. While huddling in a tent from Wyoming's bracing winds, a spontaneous moment of intimacy triggers for Jack and Ennis a long summer that combines hectic days of tending sheep with tranquil nights of tending to each other.
As the young men depart the mountain pastures when their gig ends, they split up and do what society expects of them. Jack competes in the southwestern rodeo circuit where he meets, marries, and has a son with Lureen (Anne Hathaway), herself an equestrian. Ennis weds Alma (Ledger's real-life girlfriend, Oscar nominee Michelle Williams), a quiet, loyal woman who raises their two daughters.
After four years apart, Jack returns to Ennis' small town of Riverton, Wyoming. Their still-smoldering passion flares like a zephyr-swept campfire. They stoke these flames during periodic "fishing trips" where their rods and reels stay untouched.
Jack's and Ennis's marriages grow increasingly cold, leading to a loveless union for the Twists and divorce and a broken home for the Del Mars. As this adulterous relationship spreads pain all around, one need not hark back to the Rockies of the 1960s and '70s to find parallels to Jack and Ennis's situation. Former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey's wife, Dina, bore him a baby girl before his clandestine affair with an Israeli man named Golan Cipel erupted into view in 2004. The McGreeveys split, and their daughter's live-in dad is now just a visitor.
Similarly, J.L. King's book On the Down Low discusses seemingly heterosexual black husbands who cheat on their spouses with other men. Some lucky wives land in divorce court; the least lucky unwittingly become HIV-positive.
Meanwhile, "you've got the ones that claim they're straight but have sex with men," Sam Beaumont, a gay Oklahoma rancher said in the January 30 People magazine. "And when they come home at night and their wives ask if they've been with a woman, well, they don't have to lie."
Brokeback Mountain should prompt social conservatives to ponder whether it is good family policy to encourage gay men to live lives that are traditional yet untrue. Would honest gay marriages be less destructive than deceitful straight ones? I think so. Many disagree. Even if they oppose it, however, seeing this film may give heterosexual marriage proponents a better insight into why so many Americans advocate homosexual marriage.
Brokeback Mountain also concerns homophobic violence. The October 1998 beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming; the July 1999 fatal baseball-bat attack on Army Private Barry Winchell, whose comrades in arms perceived him as gay; and the non-lethal assault on gay soldier Kyle Lawson on October 29, 2005 are just a few fairly recent examples of this phenomenon. Just last February 2, 18-year-old Jacob B. Robida used a hatchet and a gun to wound three patrons, one critically, at Puzzles Lounge, a New Bedford, Massachusetts, gay bar. (Robida died three days later, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, after he killed a female friend and a cop, both in Arkansas.) Such incidents should remind filmgoers that this grave matter was not buried on the Great Plains decades ago.
Beautifully acted, photographed, written, and directed, Brokeback Mountain quietly but powerfully asks questions that are relevant today. Americans left, middle, and right should see this touching, haunting love story, then give it the thorough mulling over it deserves.
It was a nightmare-inspiring crime: an individual with a history of antisocial behavior (and a fondness for Nazi regalia) walked into a Massachusetts gay bar and attacked the patrons with a hatchet and handgun, sending three men to the hospital, one with critical injuries. Time to play politics, boys and girls.
From NGLTF: Rhetoric
of religious right continues to fuel violence against lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender people. Excerpt:
Today's attack on men in New Bedford gay bar points to climate of hate created by right-wing obsession with homosexuality. ... The hatred and loathing fueling this morning's vicious attack on gay men in New Bedford is not innate, it is learned. And who is teaching it? Leaders of the so-called Christian right, that's who. ... The blood spilled this morning is on their hands.
I'd describe this rhetoric as, at best, hating the hater, or demagoguery for demagoguery-excerpt at least the religious rightists tend to make some distinction about loving the sinner but not the "sin."
As bad as Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, and the 700 Club are, they are not Nazi equivalents. Most Americans get this, and when gay groups suggest otherwise they simply discredit themselves.
From HRC: Anti-gay hate crime in Massachusetts is enraging reminder of need to pass law. I agree; walking into a bar and shooting people really ought to be against the law. Glad to hear that HRC is on the case.
Let's note a few things: the attack occurred in Barney Frank's district; in a state that has had state hate crimes statutes and gay anti-discrimination protections on the books for years; where the police and public authorities have reacted swiftly and, apparently, without laxity. So how would federalizing hate crime law have helped?
More: It's all over. And there
will be no hate crimes trial.
The L.A. Weekly shines a spotlight on Hollywood hypocrisy, with many Academy members refusing to even view Brokeback Mountain, and the Screen Actors Guild shutting out Brokeback entirely, preferring Philip Seymour Hoffman's asexual Capote portrayal (and minstrelsy Sean Hayes) to nonstereotypical portrayals of gay lives.
Writes columnist Nikki Finke:
Frankly, I find horrifying each whispered admission to me from Academy members who usually pose as social liberals that they're disgusted by even the possibility of glimpsing simulated gay sex. Earth to the easily offended: This movie has been criticized for being too sexually tame. Hey, Academy, what are you worried about: that you'll turn gay...
Apparently, Larry David isn't an anomaly. In Tinsel Town, they
love gays-as long as they have plenty of swish.
--Stephen H. Miller
President Bush calls for leaving behind partisan rancor (good),
but then picks up the cultural
cudgel:
Yet many Americans, especially parents, still have deep concerns about the direction of our culture, and the health of our most basic institutions. They are concerned about unethical conduct by public officials, and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage.
But revealingly, no call for a federal Constitutional amendment.
Gay Patriot West
faults activists' double standards, as the Democrats choose
Virginia's Gov. Tim Kaine, fresh from signing and sending to voters
one of the most draconian anti-gay marriage state amendments, ever,
to deliver their response to the president:
[W]hile the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) faulted California's Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenengger in multiple press releases for his veto of a bill which would have recognized same-sex marriage in the Golden State, the only reference on HRC's web-site to Kaine's support of his state's amendment resolution was a Washington Post article on the Virginia referendum.
GPW also discovered that HRC's mission statement no
longer calls the group "bipartisan," as it once did. Score one for
truth in advertsing.
I missed this last week, but conservative U.S. News & World
Report columnist John Leo
ponders the meaning of gay conservatives (and IGF), following
Andrew Sullivan's plug.
--Stephen H. Miller
In a Tue. Wall Street Journal op-ed (also available here), David
Boaz writes of libertarians unrepresented by either politicians or
media:
Gallup also found-this year as in others-that 20% are neither liberal nor conservative but libertarian, opposing the use of government either to "promote traditional values" or to "do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses."
[But] Democrats stand like a wall against tax cuts and Social Security privatization. Republicans want to ban abortion, gay marriage and "Happy Holidays." It's not just Congress-in Virginia's recent elections, all the Democrats were tax-hikers and all the Republicans were religious rightists. What's a libertarian to do?
He concludes:
According to [exit] polls, 17 million voted for John Kerry but did not think the government should do more to solve the country's problems. And 28 million Bush voters support either gay marriage or civil unions. That's 45 million who don't fit the polarized model. They seem to have broadly libertarian attitudes. In fact, it's no secret that libertarian voters make up a chunk of America. But you'd never know it from watching TV-or listening to our elected politicians.
The tragedy of our political system is that the two parties and
their activists fundraising networks use the worst propagandistic
means to keep their respective donor bases whipped into a
crazy/angry frenzy. I'm reminded of the words of W.B.
Yeats:
The centre cannot hold ...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
More. We've now posted Paul Varnell's "Neither Liberal nor Conservative," with further insights about polarization.--Stephen H. Miller
I can't say with certainty whether anti-gay Sen. Sam Brownback was in fact making an anti-gay crack when he said, in discussing gay marriage, "You look at the social impact of the countries that have engaged in homosexual marriage. You'll know 'em by their fruits," quoting (after a fashion) Matthew 7:16.
There's plenty to castigate Brownback for (Sweden doesn't even provide gays with full marriage equality) without going overboard over an ambiguous comment. But that's exactly the trap HRC fell into, with this heated response, saying Brownback's "derogatory use of 'fruits' sinks below decency." Of course, HRC is merely (as always) playing to its fundraising base, not trying to sway the wider public, and certainly not reaching out to conservative Christians who might be more familiar with biblical quotations as a part of political discourse-and thus just as likely to give Brownback a pass on the quote as gay activists were to insist it was an outright slur.
More: Would Howard Dean recognize the New
Testament if it got up and introduced itself to him? Apparently
not.
More Recent Postings
01/22/06 - 01/28/06
Dale Carpenter takes a look at what's really motivating some gay activists to oppose Alito (hint: it's not gay rights).
Joe Solmonese's Human Rights Campaign hits a new low by
declaring:
A glance at his resume reads like an anti-gay textbook. From striking down a policy that protected gay students from harassment to his view that would threaten Congress' power to enact non-discrimination laws, he's the wrong choice for the court.
As I've
noted before, even the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force
supports the Alito free-speech ruling that HRC condemns as
"anti-gay."
Moreover, Alito ruled to protect a gay student from harassment in
another decision that didn't involve draconian restrictions on
speech. And he said specifically during his testimony that Congress
has the right to pass anti-discrimiation laws that protect
gays.
Abortion-rights activist Solmonese should have stayed at Emily's List, where he happily endorsed supporters of the anti-gay federal Marriage Protection Amendment. Abortion over all!
As Carpenter writes, "The national gay groups...have pretty much
taken themselves out of any serious debate about President Bush's
judicial nominees."
Just for fun, the Oprah folks provide a chatty
summation, with lots of photos, of Friday's visit with the
Brokeback cast. This sort of publicity is priceless.