Two problems with Brokeback Mountain

I'm all up for the great American gay love story, in the same sense I was way up for To Sir With Love showing a black teacher succeeding during the civil rights era.

But Brokeback Mountain misses in some crucial ways.

1. The murder of two gay men by the heads of neighbor families, in Wyoming, during the 1960s, simply never came close to happening.

While those of us who were there know this intuitively, it's not hard to grasp for younger or more urban sorts. For one, during that era, homosexual behavior (sodomy, the crime against nature) was illegal and the law was enforced. Feeling disgusted by two gay cowboys? Call the police. And the police would come and haul them away. No need to go on a murderous rampage. For two, if you look at the class of people who express their bigotry with violence, what you find are young, unmarried men. 18-22 or so. Family men don't go out fag bashing. This whole part of the story is a slander of Wyoming ranchers of the 1960s, analogous to basing a story line on an episode where a group of adult men in stable gay relationships set out to molest the neighborhood 13 year old boys.

2. The notion that it's ok to just abandon your spouse because a better one comes by... well, let's be clear. This is my opinion, not some statement of a universal truth...that notion totally destroys any love story which might follow.