[DavidMn]

Originally Posted by sparky

GLAAD is so desperate to have gay culture legitimized that they would claim a Leave It To Beaver episode was gay. Not that I don't understand their aims, but I have different view of the culture and this movie than they do. Which I will get to...



My issue is with the definition of GAY. I am no longer looking at that word as a cultural concept. I no longer view love or my sexuality as a political statement. And while I can appreciate the marriage of the romantic and political in terms of civic struggles, it is no longer how I view my own life.



That is what I am talking about. Political activists have understandably taken the cause of equal rights, and marriage and all that, and are fighting the courts and politicians to get protections for people like myself. Their agenda does not belong in the world of every piece of art. It has little place in the world of art criticism. The word GAY to me has become so politically charged that I hesitate to even associate it with myself. IMO, gay "culture" has been spiritually and emotionally bankrupt for very long time.

What I like about this story in particular is that it is independent of all of that. Two guys fall in love. Period. I identify with it on a primal level. My life is for the most part independent of what is identified as gay culture. Most of what is included in that is of no interest at all to me. Give me a simple, down to earth guy who likes to go out in the woods, ride horses, camp, build stuff, and run around in a pickup truck. That's it. Is it a dream world ? Not really. Did we have to go through all the politics to get here ? I guess so. I could go into how those two characters could have done just that, but they didn't. It wasn't the point of the story. The fact that there was no gay community for them, that they had their private, isolated affair over those years...you can take out the adultery, take out the secrecy, and it doesn't change the spirit of the connection. It was simple, unavoidable. A force of nature. I think that's the point.

Someone that can actually see the forest through the trees. BRAVO