"Brokeback Mountain" - Dan Savage's Take

I have been following the "Brokeback Mountain" saga, of course: the awards, the appeal to a wide audience and so forth. Now I find a NY Times article by Dan Savage titled "Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Ex-Gay Cowboys" about the movie which deserves a large Hoo Rah!

These gay cowboys try, as best they can, to quit one another. They marry women, start families. But their wives are crushed when they realize their husbands don't, and can't, ever really love them. "Brokeback Mountain" makes clear that it would have been better for all concerned if Jack and Ennis had lived in a world where they could simply be together.

Sometimes I wonder if evangelicals really believe that gay men can go straight. If they don't think Chad Allen [in the movie "End of the Spear"] can play straight convincingly for 108 minutes, do they honestly imagine that gay men who aren't actors can play straight for a lifetime? And if anyone reading this believes that gay men can actually become ex-gay men, I have just one question for you: Would you want your daughter to marry one?

Evangelical Christians seem sincere in their desire to help build healthy, lasting marriages. Well, if that's their goal, encouraging gay men to enter into straight marriages is a peculiar strategy. Every straight marriage that includes a gay husband is one Web-browser-history check away from an ugly divorce.

If anything, supporters of traditional marriage should want gay men out of the heterosexual marriage market entirely. And the best way to do that is to see that we're safely married off — to each other, not to your daughters. Let gay actors like Chad Allen only play it straight in the movies.

"Would you want your daughter to marry one?" What a hoot. At times, it's not our opinion that matters as much as the questions we ask. This one is a classic. Read the whole piece.

Hat tip to Ex-gay watch for pointing to the Dan Savage article.