Dec 23, 2005   | COMMENTS     

Re “Yippee-kay-aye-yay, ‘Brokeback Mountain’!” (“Sound Off” Dec. 9):

I cannot believe anyone who paid any attention to “Brokeback Mountain” would believe that Ennis and Jack weren’t gay. Ennis doesn’t copulate with his wife from the front — a point clearly made in the film — and fails to develop any relationship with the blonde hottie who tries to woo him. Jack, on the other hand, patrons a Mexican hustler, and the film implies at the end that he developed a relationship with another rancher. Are these commentators sleeping? Watch the movie again.

I am so excited to see “Brokeback Mountain,” but why can Hollywood not cast gay men in gay roles? Would Tom Selleck be cast to play Martin Luther King? Or Sean Hayes (Jack McFarland) to play Bette Davis! Get real! But I am going to spend my money on it. It’s better than nothing.

But will it play in Peoria?
Re “Why Ennis and Jack will fall flat” (editorial by Matthew A. Hennie, Dec. 16):

What’s so important about a studio making a fortune on a small-budget movie? They have dozens of expensive flops each year, and that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to release stupid drivel. Additional films with gay themes will continue to be released.

Matthew Hennie writes that, “Many of our allies can’t stomach the thought of same-sex marriage and gays in the military.” So what exactly makes these people our allies?

It seems that Matthew Hennie has it backwards. It is our “non-allies” that could not stomach the thought of same-sex marriage and gays in the military, not our “allies.”

I’m a New York native and worked as a manager of several theaters there. I’m currently semi-retired and living in Tampa, Fla., where “Brokeback Mountain” has been booked, beginning Jan.16, into this city’s giant “showcase theater.” Not all of us in “red states” voted for George W. Bush. This film is going to spread out from the city centers and into suburban malls.

I agree that “Brokeback Mountain” will most likely not be a huge commercial success, but the fact that it has leaked into the mainstream is in itself a success. As a heterosexual from a very rural area, I completely disagree with Matthew Hennie. I saw “Brokeback Mountain” and was sitting with hetero couples, single women — all kinds of people. The film isn’t really about homosexuality so much as the suppression of true love because of social situations, and that theme lends itself to vast audiences. Love is a ubiquitous subject despite sexual orientation. People understand; they just have to be willing to listen.

Focus on Family needs to focus on talking points
Re “On the Record” (Dec. 16):

So Focus on the Family says of “Brokeback Mountain”: “You see two characters obsessed with a type of bondage that they don’t know what to do with. They don’t know where it came from, and they don’t know how to resolve it.” Is a conservative saying that two characters in a same-sex romance “don’t know where it came from”? What happened to the infallible dogma that people just choose to become homosexuals?

D.P. by any other name is incest?
Re “Save our couples from D.C.’s poison pill” (editorial by Chris Crain, Dec. 9):

I find it interesting that this editorial contradicts a news article in the very same issue. The news article about the domestic partnership law says it’s about offering a way for non-married people to be legally recognized as family so that they could financially support each other without being penalized. If Chris Crain wishes to assert that this law is promoting incest, he should let us know if there is already a separate D.C. law banning it.

Why do straight couples get the option of domestic partnerships? They can already get married, so this law isn’t about fairness but preserving inequality: not only can we not marry, straight couples get a nice new option they didn’t have before. Let them have domestic partnerships when we can also get married; that’s the fair solution.

A tale of two priests
Re “A Stonewall moment for many Catholics” (op-ed by Mary E. Hunt, Dec. 16):

Congratulations to Mary E. Hunt. The day before the Vatican document was made public, I saw two priests discussing it on “Nightline.” An older, gentle gay priest said he never had been a pedophile. Another priest, from conservative Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., said repeatedly that homosexuality was an aberration. I felt sorry ...