- Live and let live. That's what
so many Americans today think when confronted with issues involving homosexuality,
religion and politics. Even so, most prefer to turn a blind eye when
the forces preaching tolerance practice their peculiar brand of intolerance
upon the politically incorrect.
-
- That's why a film about fudgepacking
cowboys, Brokeback Mountain, raises little question when it is touted to
walk away with the lion's share of Oscars this year. And, yes, it
also is why a film that virtually all agreed was one of the most stunning
cinematic accomplishments of all time, The Passion of the Christ, failed
to garner even a single Oscar nomination recently.
-
- Brokeback Mountain, some say, is a breakthrough
effort deserving top honors simply because of its daring and differentness.
The Passion, on the other hand, was derided as religious porn and a Christian
snuff film. Am I the only one who sees one of the largest pieces
of hypocrisy in this dichotomy from the denizens of Hollywood?
-
- I sat through The Passion and witnessed
the most amazing effect upon a crowded theatre of my life. Once the
movie began, all sounds stopped. No children crying, talking or laughing.
No coughing. No whispers. Nothing. It was eerie.
And, when the lights went up, after all the credits had run down off the
screen, the entire audience - everybody - still sat in their seats, staring
at the blank screen, seemingly unable to move or, even, talk. I have
never seen a motion picture have that effect upon people before or since
and I doubt I ever will. That scene alone, repeated again and again
throughout America almost continually as the weeks wore on, justified simply
mailing all the Oscars to Mel Gibson and canceling the formal award ceremonies.
My opinion? The Passion was perhaps the most important motion picture
I ever have seen. And I'm not even much of a Christian. Yet,
The Passion came up empty, despite being one of the highest-grossing movies
of all time. Why? It was no accident, you know.
-
- And this year, the odds-on favorite is
about two guys splitting duty munching grass for one another. I grew
up in cowboy country. I now live in cowboy country. I have
known and do know a great many real, genuine cowboys. Red-blooded,
manly men, all of them. Not one - not a single one - ever has been
the slightest bit swishy, let alone like what I hear is depicted in Brokeback
Mountain. No, I refuse to see it, so you are right that I don't know
exactly how the characters are portrayed. I don't care. It's
my little protest. Yet, Brokeback Mountain is the toast of Hollywood,
despite fading badly at the box office already. Why? Again,
it is no accident.
-
- I've gotten used to being out of step.
In fact, now I question my assumptions regarding anything in which I seem
to agree with the prevailing majority outlook.
-
- I was grossly out of step recently when
I loudly and forcefully protested to the local school board their decision
to establish at Sandpoint High School a chapter of what euphemistically
is referred to as the "Gay/Straight Alliance." I knew exactly
what I was walking into, as always is the case when I take point on a politically-incorrect
issue, hopeless from the outset, against overwhelming odds.
-
- I knew I was fighting a losing cause
when a member of the supposedly impartial decision body, one of the school
board members, saw fit to lavishly endorse this homosexual club from the
podium.
-
- The meeting was stacked. Sentiment
inside the room ran 10 to 1 in favor of the GSA. The number of students
present who claimed to be homosexual was stunning. In the small town
of Sandpoint, population 6,000. The sticks. Western Appalachia.
Perhaps that alone best demonstrates the danger of allowing our schools
to reinforce misdirected sexual urges at a confusing age.
-
- "Is it just coincidence, "
I asked, "that identical homosexual clubs are being established right
now at other area high schools this year? But, nobody seemed interested
in the clear inference that an unnamed adult organization was pulling the
strings behind this rush to homosexual bliss.
-
- "Our kids have to attend school,"
I continued. "Now their math and chess clubs have to share space
with those who demand a public place to affirm and celebrate their gender-identity
disorders."
-
- "Yes," I admitted, "it
is clear that prevailing law supports the Gay/Straight Alliance, but that
means little in an increasingly Godless and un-Constitutional America."
-
- I acknowledged that it seemed unfair
to do away with all other student clubs simply to be able to legally prohibit
this homosexual club. "Clearly, the GSA is a done deal and is
not going away. Nevertheless, approval of a homosexual organization
sends the wrong message to our children." This was the point
where the Chairman moved to cut me off.
-
- Never at a loss for words, I loudly said,
"Thank you. In conclusion, I ask: Now that we have decided
it is ok to have student clubs that revolve around sex (no, it isn't just
about "tolerance" or "lifestyle"), how long before
the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) seeks to establish
a chapter at our local schools?" The Chairman became even more
agitated and demanded that I sit down.
-
- "Or, how about a Holocaust Denial
club? " I shouted into what I saw as fast developing into
my being ejected from the auditorium. I saw the confused looks flit
across the Board Members' faces. Gotcha there, I said to myself as
I took my seat.
-
- I had more to say, of course, but most
regret having been unable to rhetorically ask how long before this mentality
moves down into Sandpoint's junior high school or, even, grade school.
-
- The student GSA club was approved.
The local paper did a big puff piece and ran several letters lauding the
tolerance thereby demonstrated, but refused to print mine. The local
reporter, in fairness, did quote me accurately regarding several of my
points. A picture of lemmings marching over the cliff returned to
my mind again and again as I read how the local community supposedly was
reacting. I say "supposedly" because my interaction with
members of the community reveals a very different attitude, one more in
line with my own thinking. Interestingly, I hear that the Sandpoint
High School weekly student newspaper did just print my letter, thereby
providing a small ray of hope in my mind for the coming generation.
It is no accident that our voice gains little traction in this hoo ha.
-
- Why no accident? For the same reason
that a movie about faggot cowboys, who could exist only in the mind of
a Hollywood screenwriter, is being praised while the single greatest movie
of all time (my opinion, admittedly) was (forgive the expression) crucified,
despite being the obvious crowd favorite. Those who own the media,
those who call the shots, those who now run our government after the most-ignored
coup of all time, want it that way, that's why. Those who seek to
dismantle all of Western Christian civilization by promoting all the things
you see destroying our culture today. And those of us who attain
positions in government, even local school boards, fall all over ourselves
to toady to their obvious wishes.
-
- That's why those who preach tolerance
today always seem least inclined to tolerate other points of view.
-
- I'm reminded of the scene from Independence
Day, the smash film about ET gone bad. At one point, the American
President asks a captured alien what they want him to do. "Die,"
was the simple response. Well, that's what these interlopers into
our society want us to do and we are bending over backwards to accommodate
them. Think not? Picture running with the lemmings...
-
- Who? You know who. Don't
make me say it again. I get so tired of being almost the only one
willing to say it.
-
- My name is Edgar J. Steele.
- Thanks for listening.
- Please visit my web site, www.ConspiracyPenPal.com,
for other messages just like this one.
-
- -ed
-
- Copyright ©2006, Edgar J. Steele
- http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/rants/live.htm
-
- Comment
Alfred Lehmberg
3-5-6
-
-
- Mr. Steele seems unable to think past
gratuitous insult and immature name-calling, reader, demonstrating only
that he may be decidedly unfit to pronounce on what is or is not *natural*
behavior for the rest of us. For my money, it is *him* and the God he
complacently manufactures to do his social bidding that is the real problem,
causes all the anguish and difficulty, and creates the evolving hell on
Earth he would otherwise decry out of whole cloth.
-
- A more constructive take on what's evoked
by this film follows. Whatever is explicated by Mr. Steele, "Gay"
is, has been, and will continue to be a *reality* he should be mature enough
to accept, at last. To be contrary in the manner of Mr. Steele? I suspect
it is to be against God AND nature.
-
- I should add, just so there will be no
misunderstanding? I'm not, remotely, gay. And, I'd bet, neither is Ms.
Hatch.
-
- alienview@adelphia.net www.AlienView.net
AVG Blog -- http://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/
-
-
-
- Why 'Brokeback' Strikes A Chord
- From:http://tinyurl.com/z9fw6
-
- By Lauri Githens Hatch Staff Writer
-
- (March 2, 2006) - Three times I saw Brokeback
Mountain: Once to see it; once to take two teen stepdaughters to see it;
and once to watch everyone around me see it.
-
- And when the lights came up for the third
time, to reveal for the third time faces of all ages and races streaked
with tears, then I knew.
-
- This movie isn't about the life-defining
sexual relationship that two men didn't get to keep.
-
- This is about the life-defining love
that none of us got to keep.
-
- We've been focusing on the wrong body
part, folks. This film ends focusing on two entwined shirts because of
the organ that rests just beneath them - the human heart, and the space
in it that each of us reserves for our own love that never grows old.
-
- You know the one. The person you weren't
looking for and, God knows, weren't prepared for, but who found you nonetheless,
reached in and rearranged the inner workings of your heart, transforming
you - over years or maybe overnight - from girl to woman or boy to man.
-
- And right now, that is the love that
dare not speak its name.
-
- Why? Because after dating for as long
as we do, and dating as many people as we do, and marrying as late as we
do, there's no excuse for not getting it right when we finally do pair
off. There's no excuse for lingering feelings. They're not just uncool,
they're downright unseemly. They bespeak mess, emotional complexities and
the mysterious many-chambered mansion that is the human heart - the thing
we like to believe we can control like an internal iPod: Download and add
this person, delete those. Ping. Gone.
-
- Except some loves never really do go.
And what does it take to bring yours back to you? The purplish sky at dusk?
The scent of an autumn night? For thousands, it is this movie.
-
- It is almost impossible to see it and
not feel some internal door that you've kept carefully closed for years
suddenly bang open, and then blowing through your life again is all of
it: Your meeting. Your discovery. The years between you. The tears between
you. And then, ultimately, the truth you both knew like you knew your names:
Right person, wrong time. To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim: You should have
belonged together. But you did not belong together.
-
- Perhaps a war got in your way. Or parents.
Or religion. Or geography. Or simply diverging paths that you each chose
to follow, only to turn around at the end and find the other gone.
-
- Of course, whether it's a blessing or
a curse, modern life makes it easy for us to partly retrieve what was lost
- to find these people so indelibly ingrained in us. In a café,
at work, in the dark of a quiet house late at night, we can tap computer
keys, search and find. Sending an electronic hello isn't necessary - sometimes
it's enough just to know they're alive.
-
- Never for a moment would we give up the
lives we've painstakingly carved out since them.
-
- But never for a moment either would we
- can we - give up that Jack, that Ennis, that defining love that molded
us as surely as our childhoods.
-
- Maybe we have children to mark that time
together. Maybe a picture. Maybe nothing at all tangible. But deep inside,
we all have a closet. And in it rests a shirt; and the memory of the person
who filled it; and of the person you were, with them.
-
- Brokeback Mountain makes you realize
the beauty and sheer wonder of ever getting to feel that way at all; some
never do.
-
- But it also makes you realize that years
down the road there may come a moment - not courtesy of a postcard, but
of an Internet search engine - when James Taylor's lyric will prove wrong:
-
- You always thought that you'd see them,
baby, one more time again. But you never did. And now you never will.
-
- And then that closet - its shirt and
its memories - will be all that any of us have left. Yet for all the pain,
we wouldn't have missed that person, not a single bit of them, for the
world.
-
- And that, I think, is why after two hours
and 14 minutes, Brokeback Mountain finds us, gay and straight, male and
female, young and old, in our seats with eyes closed and streaming, and
heart constricting, as undone as we were a lifetime ago when we first laid
eyes on them, and undone once again.
-
- Some loves, it turns out, are forever.
-
|
