Hi MT,
Originally posted by midnight Target
The movie shows 2 men who ruin their lives and their families through forbidden love.
Great message huh? Boy howdy those hollywood libs are really sneaking one over on the rest of the country.
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Ummmm, actually MT Brokeback was based on a short story by Annie Proulx who writes deranged tales set in the West (think David Lynch meets the Big Country). The message of the "Brokeback" story in
Wyoming Tales is fairly transparent, these guys are gay, and the problem is not them or their forbidden love for one another but the Western "macho" society that forces them to stay in the closet. Their lives aren't ruined by their homosexuality, their happiness as homosexuals is ruined by cowboy society. Incidently, if you don't believe me, do what I did, go to Barnes and Noble, grab a coffee and a copy of Wyoming Tales and read it. It doesn't take long.
What the heck are you guys afraid of? No need to answer, it's obvious. You're afraid that someday people will realize that homosexuality is NOT a choice and that homosexuals should be granted the same respect as any other member of society who has consentual sex with adults. You're afraid that movies like this will increase the understanding and acceptance of the 8-10% of our society who have been ostracized and even killed for their sexual preference. You're terrified that something that is listed as an abomination in the bible might turn out to be no more of an abomination than eating shellfish.
First a note about your Bible comparison. Yes, the Old Testament dietary restricitions included not eating shell-fish, they were considered unclean to eat them made a person ceremonially unclean and thus unable to participate in the religious rites of the nation of Israel and the rules were given to show that these were a people different from all the other nations, literally set-apart and holy to the Lord. There was no death penalty, however, for eating unclean animals, and the dietary restrictions themselves were lifted in the New Testament (see Acts 10:10-15) when the reason for them had been fulfilled.
The penalty for most forms of fornication, i.e. sexual activity outside of wedlock under the Old Testament judicial law was death. This included adultery, bestiality, rape, and incest. So actually while people get hung up with the prohibitions and penalty for homosexuality, the Bible (Old and New Testament) forbids all sexual relations outside of those between husband and wife. Simply put, sexual relations within marriage are God's good gift, all the others are a sinful misuse of that good gift.
Today, the laws against all of these are gradually disappearing in the west because we have embraced legal positivism and abandoned the concept that our laws should be based on absolutes. Therefore, today incest is against the law, but should society decide its ok a few years from now, or more importantly a few judges decide its ok, it will become legal. We have moved from fixed to floating standards. For someone however who believes in absolutes, the constantly changing whimsey of society doesn't suddenly make something that was wrong, right and another thing that was right, wrong.
What really sickens me is how some can call for the outright hatred of an entire group of people using religion as an excuse. " Oh no MT, we don't hate anyone, just their actions"..... which they have as much control over as you have over your breathing.
Sickening.
MT, respectfully, I spend much of my life not on the idealized, "its all ok, and normal, and beautiful" side but on the other side, dealing with the long term fall-out of the things scripture calls sin. I've done counseling with people who have fallen into the regular practice of all sorts of sexual sins, including the most common - adultery and fornication, but also pedophilia, homosexuality, and incest, and no the results of all of these are not beautiful in families and individual lives, people are not created to be able to do these things without damage occuring, both physical and spiritual. And while people may have strong, and what some would call "undeniable," inclinations and urges towards them, they are still not the way it should be. And yes, they can be controlled, just "not by power, nor by might..."
Just because I have a strong sexual urge, does not make it right. For instance, no matter how much I may try to justify it, or say it was irresistable or natural, an act of adultery on my part is still an act of betrayal, a breaking of trust, and a sin no matter how I cut it. And no, I couldn't counsel people struggling with problems if I simply "hated" them. Heck, if you had any idea how hard it is to spend day after day wading through all the muck that people hide away in their lives that result from a mad quest to be happy via means that will never make them really happy you'd understand why the suicide rate for people like cops and psychiatrists is so high.
But, then again, untill someone gets "to the end of themselves" they're very unlikely to believe all that.
- SEAGOON
